


Walking Into Nightmares

by SylvaniusOStephans



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, COMPLETE!, Dark, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Psychopath, Revenge, Serial Killers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-07-18 13:09:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 71,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7316383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvaniusOStephans/pseuds/SylvaniusOStephans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>COMPLETE!!!</p><p>One Name.</p><p>Five empty spots.</p><p>Emiliano Altieri was a man of information and facts. He may have been a cold, bitter, detached, slightly cruel man, but even he had things he wouldn't do. Oh, he had no problem blackmailing, threatening, or even intimidating people who were standing in his way. When the only person who ever lit his dark world ended up dead, and Liano was blamed for it, he knew he would have to delve into his own darkness to get revenge. One night, he gets a file. A week later, he gets arrested for the murder of his best friend. Once he gets away from the few people that are trying to help him after he breaks out, he finally gets to look at the file. In it, there was an empty list, except for one spot. One name. Liano, while in the darkness, with only candlelight, promised himself he would get his revenge for the one who took his light from him. No matter the cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fight

He glanced around his office calmly. To most people, it would look like he was disinterested in his surroundings, but those that knew him would know that every bit of his calculating mind was on the person in front of him. He wasn't trying to charm the woman who sat nervously in front of him. He was a professional after all. Just because he could charm the woman into forgetting about her husband, didn't mean that he wanted to.

Speaking of her husband, he wondered where to start. Thirty- three year old Matthew Jacobs was a bad, bad husband. He worked for a small insurance company and left most weeks for a few days to work. Or, at least, that was what he had told his wife. A month or so ago, Jacobs wife of five years, Susan, had stumbled into Liano's office, looking like Liano was going to eat her. While, at first, it had been amusing, it had gotten annoying within minutes.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure why Mrs. Jacobs had bothered coming to his office in the first place. She clearly knew about her husband's double life. Or, well, triple life, as the case may be. After a bit of digging, he had found out that Matthew Jacobs, also known as Michael Jacobs, and Jacob Matthews in a fit of stupidity he was sure, was not only married as one of his aliases, but two of them, and engaged in the third. The idiot was, apparently the father of not only Mrs. Jacobs unfortunate four children, but two more by his second wife, while his fiancé was pregnant with his 'first' child.

How the fool had managed to get away with this for so long, he had no idea. It wasn't even that the man was particularly smart either. Two of the three women lived within five miles of each other, while his second wife lived about fifteen miles away from the first one.

What really annoyed him was that wife two, Charlotte Jacobs, said that her husband was not only an excellent father, but a great man and provider, before asking him if his wife was stupid enough to support him. Clearly, she didn't notice the fact that he, the sex god, Emiliano Altieri, was a bachelor for life. He didn't wear a ring, nor did he have that stupid tan line like most men who tried to pretend that they were single.

He understood how the man had pulled one over on wife two, but his fiancé, Laura Grey, was working for a lawyer's office and seemed like a smart girl. She, out of all three, was probably the most intelligent and calculating twenty- six year old that he had met.

She was only two years older than him, but it seemed like that stupid saying was true. Love was blind, or just stupid. Liano wasn't sure which.

Nevertheless, she fell for the same trap as the other two, which made her an idiot in his book, no matter how attractive he thought she was. It just went to show that not all attractive people were as intelligent as he was. Narcissistic or not, he had gotten lucky enough to have both brains and beauty. Laura Grey clearly didn't.

Liano mentally shook off the thought and made sure his posture was both straight and self assured. Mrs. Jacobs was someone that he needed to handle carefully unless he wanted her crying all over him. He really, really didn't want to have to deal with that, so he made himself slightly more unapproachable as he went through his findings. He presented wife one with not only pictures of her husband with the other two women, but a slew of strippers that the man seemed to have a thing for.

Finally, his hour was up, and he calmly thanked her for coming, and received the final payment for the case. What happened from now on wasn't his business. If she divorced her husband, confronted the other women, or shot the man, he didn't care. If she took his findings to the police, as long as they left him alone, he didn't care. As soon as she walked out his door, she was no longer his problem.

He could say one thing though, he was glad as hell that this case was over. All four of the adults involved, if anyone could actually call them that, had acted ridiculously. He felt a brief pang in thought of the children that would have to deal with the fallout, but easily reminded himself that it wasn't his business.

Glancing around the room again, Liano felt a small amount of satisfaction. He was only twenty- four, and he had graduated from a respectable college where he had majored in criminal justice, started up his own little private investigative service, and had actually started living a life that was his.

A few years ago, he had been nothing more than the orphan no one wanted, but he had managed to graduate early from high school, unlike what most people thought he could do, and now, he was, well, maybe not a reputable private investigator, but a damn good one.

He didn't run from his past, he acknowledged it, and used it to become better at what he had chosen. Sure, he would never be a cop. He was too twisted to be an honest cop, but he had delved into the world's grey side. Liano loved what he did, even if most of what he got paid for were stupid cases. He had mastered being where and what no one had expected. He had pride in not only his appearance, but his skills.

Standing calmly, Liano walked over to his coat rack, grabbing his black jacket, and buttoned it. His dark green button up shirt peeked through at the top as he fixed his collar, and unbuttoned the first one button that felt suffocating. His black slacks were carefully pressed and as perfect as he could make them. He grabbed a black cane with a fox on the top in his thin, almost feminine hand.

He wasn't what most people would call traditionally masculine, but he was attractive in an androgynous kind of way. He had dark brown hair that just passed his shoulders in a slightly curly mess that he usually tied back with a black ribbon. His eyes were slightly wider than normal, and dark blue with a hazel ring around his pupils. His nose was perfectly straight, but not big, accenting his high cheek bones.

Yes, he wasn't masculine, but he had learned how to use his looks to manipulate his chosen victims into doing whatever he wanted, or telling him whatever he needed to hear. He had just as easy of a time manipulating men as women, but that was probably due to his slightly taller than average frame with thin, but powerful muscles covering every inch of his body.

He mentally snorted, never allowing himself to make such a noise out loud. He wasn't narcissistic, despite popular opinion. He knew who he was, and easy acknowledged his flaws as easily as his strengths. He was careful not to get too full of himself, as that would only become another flaw that he didn't want to deal with. He had enough of those, and he knew how to hide them behind his carefully crafted façade. He wasn't sure how he would be able to hide his narcissism if that ever became a problem.

Then again, he had no problem going from his usual respectable persona to whatever the situation called for. He had lived on the streets, after all. No matter how he dressed or acted, he was still the orphan who was never adopted and kicked out on his eighteenth birthday. He was still the kid who did whatever he needed to do in order to go to, pay for, and graduate from college. He knew who he was, and unlike a lot of people, he actually liked himself. He was self assured, calculating, and charming to those that he needed to be.

His fingers tightened around his cane, the only sign of discomfort he allowed himself to show, and locked up his office. He forced himself to smirk in the mirror that rested in the hallway. He needed to find another job soon if he wanted to be able to pay rent for the next month. He had only worked three cases this month, and the most difficult of them had been Mrs. Jacobs, which was just sad. He hadn't even been shot at this month!

To most people, that would be a good thing, but to him, it meant that he was bored. Bored beyond belief. He had been aware when he had started his little business that most cases would be easy, and there was very little danger involved in the typical type of cases that he took.

In all fairness, he usually only took cases of cheating husbands who seemed to believe that marriage was simply a new word for creating one's own harem. Illegal? Yes. Challenging? No.

One day, he was going to be the one to confront those idiots and ask, finally, if they knew it was illegal, or if they simply thought that they were the exception to the rules. Until then, he would just be mentally smacking himself over the head at the idiotic nature of some people.

He hid a chuckle behind his hand, and made sure that everything was where it was supposed to be, before leaving his little office. As of right now, he didn't have a car, and thus, made use of all things either walking or public transportation. He enjoyed the looks he got whenever he got on the bus looking like this. It made people both curious, and wanting to back away as far as they could.

After all, there had to be a reason that he was so confident that he would go onto a bus dressed this way. Well, dressed nice casual in his mind, but he supposed that it didn't matter much. To be fair, he did actually have a very good reason that he was comfortable walking around like this. He knew that most people wouldn't dare try to rob him. He could spot pick-pocketers faster than most people, and simply stared down those who tried to rob him until they backed away.

It was one of his few pleasures watching them get intimidated without actually having to do much. He supposed his casual approach had something to do with the fact that a few years ago, it had been him on the streets having to steal to survive. He understood the mental strain that they were under, and thus, used intimidation rather than actually having to hurt anyone.

As it was, he preferred to walk. It may not have been faster, but it kept him in shape. He needed to run a lot more than most people did, and the day he was slower than his prey was the day he could wind up dead. Well, that, and as long as the weather was nice, it was relaxing to walk instead of being in a stuffy bus with a bunch of screaming children, drunkards, and abusers. Not to mention, the smells lingering in the air of the buses and subway cars are just as unpleasant as the people that frequent them.

It was a lovely spring day. The weather was nice for this time of year, in the high fifties if he wasn't mistaken. It was chilly, but not freezing thanks to the warm sun. The cars rushing past him were loud enough to block out all of the nature sounds, and the traffic around him made the air slightly smoggy, but he didn't mind. He loved it here. No one here knew who he had been.

No, that wasn't right. No one here knew what he had been. He wasn't ashamed, per say, of what he had to do in order to survive, but it wasn't something that he enjoyed a lot of people knowing either. Those who did would usually sneer should he be around. Here though, he was simply a no one. He could do whatever he wanted and would be nothing more than a statistic rather than having a reputation for certain things that most people would have considered shady.

He had only been here for three months, and had spent years trying to decide where he would move to one he was done with school. He couldn't afford to go far, but he had managed to get away.

Unlike most of the others, he was one of the lucky ones. No, he hadn't been adopted, had been orphaned early, and wasn't really social unless he was trying to get something, but he had been able to escape the town that he had been born in.

He couldn't ever forget where he came from, or what he had done, but that didn't mean he was going to tell anyone about it. No, he was more content here, only speaking to his clients or on cases, than he had ever been in the orphanage or in college.

Of course, at the end of the day, being content meant nothing as long as one had nothing, he couldn't help but think.

For most of his life, he had exactly that: nothing. Every single thing he had in his life, from his shoes to his office, he had fought for.

To most people, it would look like he was a bit prissy about what he wore and things like that. But, he knew that until a person had not owned anything for their entire life, they wouldn't understand his obsession with keeping everything as perfect as the day he bought it.

Speaking of perfect, he fought back rage that welled up inside of him. His apartment was the only place that he could be any or none of his outside personas. Because of that, he was very picky with how it looked. He dusted his home biweekly, swept daily, and generally had an obsession with making it look as perfect as he felt it should be.

That said, he knew that he would never break down the door to his own apartment. So, the question became: who did?

He glanced around, careful not to step past his door, and heard himself sigh. He mentally went through the typical list of people that would want to harm him.

Ex? No, he didn't really date. Which ruled out sibling of an ex as well as jealous current boyfriends of an ex. He only had one friend, and even if they were fighting, which they weren't, the worst she would do is drug him and paint his nails a crazy color. He didn't know how many times she had done that to him, he stopped counting after twenty, but she wouldn't do this.

Clients were similarly ruled out, as were the people he spied on for them. No one from work knew where he lived, for his own safety of course.

He also didn't have any parents, cousins, or siblings that he might have upset, seeing as they didn't exist in the first place, so that was out too. Too much was gone for it to be a simple warning, though. His home phone, his television, his kitchen table, and his couch were gone, though how they got the couch out, or why they left him the chairs that matched his table, he had no idea. On the other hand, they didn't take enough for it to be a robbery.

Information gathering then? He stroked his fingers over the cool metal fox head on his cane and mentally shrugged. It was the most probable cause for someone to take his stuff.  
He knew that a lot of people kept things hidden in plain sight, and he was guilty of doing the same, except he was a bit smarter, it seemed.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed 911, before pausing. Something wasn't right. His sharp blue - hazel eyes scanned the room in the same way that he had been taught to by his instructors back in college. On the first glance, he didn't see anything that would have made him react in the way he had.

The second look, though, he understood that it wasn't one thing, or else he might have dismissed it, but several things. From here, he could make out the well worn spine of his favorite book, not on the second of three rows towards the middle of the case, but on the bottom shelf on the right. His coffee table had been left in the room, but it had been moved, probably only a foot or so in order to move the couch, but it had been moved. His slippers were also not on his shoe rack, but gone all together. Considering that he never wore anything except for the slippers inside of his apartment, he knew that he wouldn't have left them somewhere else. A newspaper was neatly folded up on one of his kitchen chairs, the one he usually sat on, while a thin manila folder rested calmly on the mantle where his television had once been.

While these things may have been small, to him, they added up to only one thing.

A taunt.

His fingers tightened around his cane, and he forced himself to take a deep breath. Whoever had done this was not only leaving a message, I know you, and asking a favor, Come on, look at the folder, but taunting him. I see you, the person's actions taunted, I know what makes you tick.

That, if nothing else, pissed him off. The newspaper in the chair would not only tell him when the crime had occurred, but it also was placed in his chair, the one he used. That meant the person knew not only where he sat, but didn't mind showing off his or her so called knowledge.

The missing couch said that the person knew where he worked at home, while the missing table told him that they knew about his love of cooking. The file resting where his television had been told him that not only did they know what he watched most often, crime and mystery shows, but that he would find the file so much more interesting.

His home phone and slippers being gone, on the other hand, were simply mocking. That told Liano that not only did they seem to know so much about his work life, they also knew about the small comforts he indulged in. His slippers, while old, were both expensive as well as the most comfortable things he owned. His phone spoke of the fact that somehow, some way, they knew he preferred speaking on his home phone versus his cell.

Somehow, knowing about his slippers and his phone were more annoying to him than anything else. They weren't just missing to prove that the person knew him. Oh no, they were gone to make him unsettled. Because Liano knew that if someone knew him well enough to know about his slippers, then that only meant one thing.

A shudder of revulsion ran through him. It meant that, whoever they were, they were watching him.

After growing up the way he did, rather you wanted to call it a children's home, or an orphanage, and finally leaving the hell hole, he had been very strange about his privacy. No one, not even the one person he called a friend, was allowed to come over without first calling, or scheduling a meeting with him.

The fact that someone would invade his privacy like that was enough to make the bile rise in his throat. He swallowed hard, trying to shove down the feeling of violation, but it didn't work.

His first steps in his apartment were taken at a run, straight to his bathroom where he fell to his knees and felt both his eyes and throat burning.

He threw up once, twice, a third time before he managed to get a grip on himself. He was shaking more than a bit, and his face burned with both embarrassment as well as rage.  
This was one of the few times he was able to admit that no one made it out of the orphanage without being scarred. Most of the kids he had grown up with had a hatred for authority figures, trust issues the size of Jupiter, and an obsession with their property.

He mentally snorted when he remembered that it wasn't called an orphanage anymore, but a children's home. As if anyone could ever think of that place as a home.

He, as well as a few others that he had once known had refused to call them group homes, or children's homes, because they weren't. Just because society thought that the term should change didn't mean that he agreed.

A rose by any other name, and all of that, he thought with a silent sigh as he forced himself up off the floor and staggered over to the sink.

He had survived, though, he reminded himself as he rinsed his mouth. He had not only survived, but he had gotten away. Which was more than most of those he had known could say.

He was a respected private investor, even if he wasn't well known, and had managed to thrive in his new sanctuary.

This person, though, had managed to take away his illusion of safety and had given Liano the wakeup call that he so desperately needed. Privacy and safety were illusions that he couldn't afford to have if he wanted to survive in the game he had entrenched himself in.

He took a deep breath and brushed his teeth, shoving back the feeling of vulnerability as far back as he could.

This wasn't a game, and unless he was careful, this life would take his own. If he really wanted to be a good PI, then he needed to be able to adapt to any type of situation with the ease and grace he had fought so hard for.

A part of him couldn't help but wonder if this was all just a nightmare that he would wake up from, given a bit of time. Then, he realized how pathetic it was that, if this was a nightmare, that this was what he dreamed about.

Not getting killed by a train being unable to stop until he was crushed into the metal and wood of the tracks. Not dying while traveling on an airplane that was falling towards the sea. Not spiders or snakes or shadows in the night. Oh no, if this was a nightmare, that would mean his worst fear was something as stupid as being watched.

A voice from the hall startled him enough to make him jump, even if he would never admit it. He looked around in a panic, before closing his eyes once more. If he was going to be useful in any sense of the word, he needed to calm down.

Besides, he knew that voice better than his own. He knew that she wouldn't hurt him, and if he was going to make sure no harm came to her, he needed to calm down.

After a small pause, he flushed the toilet and moved back towards his sitting room. There, looking around with wild panic much like his own, was the red haired, blue eyed angel that he adored more than anything.

She was still just outside his apartment, and biting her lip and clearly trying to respect his rule of no shoes in the apartment, while worried sick over him.

He gave her one of his rare smiles, and she calmed down almost instantly.

"Are you alright Sophie?" He asked, careful to keep his voice steady.

Sophia Lucas, or Sophie as he called her, had joined him in the children's home when he was six and she was four. Both of her parents were killed by a drunk driver eighteen years ago.

He had heard the commotion that he had long since associated with some of the older kids bullying the younger ones, and was about to leave it alone, but then, he heard a scream, and couldn't stop himself from running to her aid.

He had broken his nose, two fingers on his left hand, and had a couple of bruised ribs at the end, but the little redhead had not been touched.

Since then, she followed him around like a little cub, and he kept everyone else away from her so that she wouldn't be hurt.

They had been separated, though, a year later, when Sophie had been picked for foster care, but she had been back by his side less than two months later.

Neither of them liked to speak about what had happened to her in that house, but both were aware of it. Afterwards, she had simply huddled closer and trusted him to protect her.  
As soon as he was close enough, she jumped on him and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

Her head was buried in his neck, and she was shaking in his arms. "Leo." She muttered over and over again.

That nickname was the biggest reason he had started calling her 'cub'. But no one else called him that unless they wanted a black eye or two.

They were similar in many ways, especially when it came to trying to protect the other, but when it came down to it, he was her Leo, and she was his cub.

A lot of people had thought that maybe, just maybe, they would start dating, get married, have a few kids, and live happily ever after. He, on the other hand, simply thought that they were idiots if they thought he would date his cub.

He liked older women, not his little sister. Idiots.

"What happened here, Leo?" She asked once her body had stopped shaking.

He hid a small sigh. As of right now, he didn't exactly know anything. He suspected, which rated higher than guessed on his mental list, but he didn't know anything other than a few things had been taken from his house, and a few things had been left there to taunt him.

He glanced down at his door, and tried to figure out if that actually meant something, or if he was just, once again, being slightly paranoid. Then again, Sophie was there, and if she was with him, then it was always better to be paranoid that having her dead.

Was he being slightly overprotective of her? Probably. He knew that she didn't need it anymore. He had gotten used to protecting her from things that they couldn't see, and that meant he was going to be extremely careful with how he had to answer the question, unless he wanted her to start asking her own.

He knew that if she did start asking questions, it would be dangerous for both of them, seeing as how she had yet to learn the importance of backing down from a fight that you couldn't win.

No, she would be more of a liability than a help at this point.

"I am not sure yet." Liano said slowly. "I might have just made the wrong person mad." Which, he couldn't help but think, was clearly a given. The question was, would they stop here, or would it become physical?

Somehow, he doubted that whoever had done this would stop until the message sunk in. What the message was, he didn't know. It had something to do with that folder though. That part was obvious.

Sophie met his eyes, before glancing over to the folder as well. "You're hiding something from me." She said simply, rolling her eyes as if wondering how he had the audacity to even think about keeping her out of the way.

"What makes you think that?" He asked, matching her tone with his own slightly bored, but concerned voice.

She bit her lip again, and brought a hand up to mess with her long red locks. A nervous gesture, very different from his own, but just as dangerous, as it meant that she was thinking more than she probably should. "You're drawing out your words." She told him after a few moments. "You know, or at least suspect that whatever happened here isn't over. Am I wrong?"

He felt his eyes harden. This was the last thing he needed. She was nervous, which was good, but she was also sure of herself, a dangerous thing to be when someone is facing an unknown enemy.

"Yes." He lied, staring in her eyes. "I have no idea who did this," truth. "why they did this," also a truth. "or what they want." half lie. "All I know is that when I came home, this is what I saw. No one strange has been hanging around, or else one of the security guards would have noticed, and I am not just going to start questioning my neighbors, Sophie." He bit out, grinding his teeth together and feeling his heart rate speed up in his chest.

Mostly true, that time, he told himself. It's for her own good after all.

He wouldn't question anybody, but he would subtly attempt to extract information from them, or carefully enquire about possibly viewing the security footage for the hall. He knew better than to try and lie flat out to his one friend, but that didn't mean he couldn't tilt the truth just a bit in order to keep her safe.

Wasn't that what friends did for each other?

Then again, seeing as she was the only person he believed was worthy to hold that title, maybe he wasn't exactly knowledgeable on the subject. It probably didn't help that he was pretty sure that how he and Sophie acted wasn't the same way as most friends did.

He treated her, well, more as a little sister, or, in a few cases, like his daughter. She was his everything, and he wasn't about to allow her to get hurt just because she was worried about him. If that meant he needed to lie in her face, then that's what he would do. He would do anything to keep her safe.

Even, he braced himself, pissing her off so that she wouldn't even try to help him.

He needed to get her to leave. No, he needed to get her to storm away from him so angry that she wouldn't even think about contacting him for a few days, or at least until he could figure this mess out. Until he had, it would be too dangerous for her, and he wasn't willing to risk that she would be hurt.

"Why would you..." She took a deep, calming breath. "I'm not saying you would. But Leo, it looks like whoever did this could have seriously hurt you. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"As long as you stay away, I'll be fine. Do you really think that I'm stupid enough to need your help with this? Who do you think I am? You?" Liano hated himself a little more with each cutting word, but kept his tone toxic because it was the only way he knew to keep her safe. "I don't need the help of some weak little girl, Sophia. Besides, you would just get in the way if you stayed here."

Tears welled up in her blue eyes, and it took every bit of strength he had to keep from comforting her, and telling her that he was sorry and didn't mean a word of it. It was for her own good. If she was mad, she was safe, he told himself.

After this was over, he would beg her forgiveness, but for now, he needed to do this. "Go home, Sophia. You aren't wanted here. You aren't welcome here. You are not needed here. Just go away and leave me alone." He turned away from her and took a second to prepare himself for the lie that he was about to say. It would probably be the cruelest thing he ever said to anyone, let alone to his sweet little angel. But it had to be done. "You've never been able to even save yourself, Sophia. What makes you think you can save me? For that matter, what makes you think I need, or even want you to?"

He heard her sob and run off, and he closed his eyes. At that moment, he didn't think it was possible to loathe one's self more than he did right now. He hurt her, and used the abuse that she had survived against her. He made her think that he, the one person who had always been with her, thought she was weak for being physically, verbally, and sexually abused in foster care.

He didn't really think that. How could he when, even after all that she had been through, she still managed to love and care for others? If anything, it made her stronger than him. She still lived, loved, and had happiness. He was stuck with one foot in the past and the rest of himself trying to catch up with life.

His head fell forward against the hard wood of the door frame. She was too good for him, hell, she was too good for anybody, and had accepted him back, even after hurting her and pushing her away time and time again. He hoped that, one day, she would understand why he had said that, and forgive him, even if he knew he didn't deserve it.

She's safe, he repeated again, this is to keep her safe.


	2. The Arrest

He got ready as he did every morning, and ignored the hole in his heart. Eventually, it would stab over, he knew, but until she forgave him for being such a monster, it would never truly heal.

If he was going to survive and function through the day, without giving in and calling her a hundred times to apologize, then he needed to stay busy. Luckily, or unluckily as the case may be, he still needed to finish up the paperwork from the last two cases he had. It had been laying on his desk for the better part of the week. He also, somehow, needed to find a way to go to the bank in order to deposit the money he had gotten from Mrs. Jacobs, do his weekly maintenance of the business he ran, and, once he was done with that, he could come home and finish cleaning up.

He had done a bit already, and by that he meant he once again had a door to his apartment, but that was about it. His old door was still inside, and leaning against the wall, as well as several other things that now needed to be cleaned up, organized, or just fussed over until he was tired enough to sleep that night.

If he had his way, there would be someone stopping by the office that morning, giving him a case that would take him weeks to solve, and wouldn't be yet another cheating husband running off with his twenty something year old babysitter, or a wife running off with the pool boy.

That wasn't to say he did nothing with his time from yesterday. He had gotten a light imprint from a shoe on his door, and , from his calculations, the person who broke down his door was around six feet tall, who wore a size eleven shoe. What kind of shoe? He had no idea. Seeing as he refused to call anyone, the only evidence that had been collected was his own. He had managed to get a partial fingerprint on the coffee table, but it wasn't really worth anything, seeing is it looked more like the person, probably man, who had moved his table simply had a small hole in his glove.

Liano shook his head slightly and allowed himself to sigh as he carefully locked his new door for the second time, the first being the night before after he had finally installed it.

He held the key in his hand for a moment, before letting it drop in his right pocket, where it would remain for the rest of the day. His grip adjusted on his cane slightly, and frowned again at it. Somehow, when he had dropped it last night, it had scraped against something, and now, just a sliver of it's original oak color showed through the paint.

He mentally added fixing that to his mental list of things to do that day. Not that he needed anything else, but then again, it would be good for him to be busy rather than obsessing if Sophie was alright.

He pushed the thoughts of the red head out of his mind, and frowned again. If this morning was any indication of anything, he was in for a long, long day.

A big part of him wanted to simply curl up in his bed and not move for the next week, but the adult part of him, as Sophie called it, told him that unless he worked he wouldn't be able to afford rent, and didn't he want to not get behind?

His inner Sophie was very rational like that.

Of course, his inner him was a bit more, well, difficult to handle. It was drenched with guilt, loathing, and a bunch of other feelings that he refused to feel right now. There were plenty of things that needed his attention right now, and inner him wasn't one of them.

The walk was shorter than usual, and cold enough to make him button up his coat the rest of the way and tighten the grey scarf around his neck. But, it helped him clear his mind and focus on work, so he allowed it.

By the time he got to his office, he was shivering, and wondering if the fact that he couldn't feel his toes was just because of the shoes he was wearing, or simply the temperature.

He hung his coat on the coat hanger by the door, and pulled his gloves off, stuffing both them and his scarf into the coat pockets. He glanced in the mirror and ran a hand through his messy dark brown locks until he had smoothed down the windblown hair back into it's usual pulled back style.

Strangely enough, he was aware that he wasn't his usual close- to- perfect self, but couldn't understand why it was affecting him so badly. He had to push Sophie away several times before this, but he had never felt so badly about it. He had always just accepted that it was something he had to do in order to keep her safe.

And yet...

He had never used her past against her before. That was the difference. Usually, either he made her angry by insinuating that her boyfriend of three years, Trevor something or another, was cheating on her, or he simply babied her until she got fed up with him and ran off, screaming about how aggravating he was.

Clearly, she did not understand how amazingly charming and handsome he was.

His small smile died before it could fully form on his lips. Some people had to do what they had to do, and he had to push her away fast enough that he could actually figure out what happened while the trial was still warm.

He would pay back whoever the idiot was that broke into his house ten times over, until they regretted even thinking about touching his stuff. Not because he wanted to hurt the people that forced him to hurt Sophie. Clearly, he was too mature and old to blame someone like that. Of course he was.

It took him until two o'clock to finish the cleaning, and another hour to finish up his paperwork. He knew that most small businesses hired people to do the jobs that they didn't want to do, but he was still far too new in order to be able to afford that just yet.

Maybe by this time next year, he would be able to afford hiring someone to do the paperwork for him, or arrange all of his appointments so that he didn't have to. He wasn't about to give up going out and solving the cases by himself, he was too paranoid for that, but he could use some help in the office.

He glanced through the papers that would make sure that his gun license would last with a sigh. He had gotten it when he was twenty one, and the first one only lasted three years. There was a bit more paperwork involved to make sure everything he did was legal, but he still managed it.

Liano settled back in his chair, raising the next of the forms so that he could read it before he leaned forward to sign it. He never signed anything without reading it at least once. He wasn't sure if it was paranoia or something similar, but he hated the thought of not knowing exactly what he was signing. For all he knew, the forms for his license could have a hidden subsection that basically signed away all of his freedom to carry any other weapon, ammo, or whatever else.

Okay, maybe that was going a bit far. He knew that he would be fine if he signed it without reading every single word, but he would rather spend some extra time reading rather than have any surprises.

Who knew what could happen if he acted the same way that Sophie did. He had seen her sign a check when they were out eating without checking and double checking the amounts first. She could have been robbed and taken advantage of financially had he not been there to stop her and make sure everything was in order before giving it back to the waitress.

As it was, the waitress had overcharged her by almost five dollars. It wasn't much to normal people but to them, especially at that time, it was a lot of money. Neither of them were able to afford paying for both of them, so the few times that they went out, he had been obsessive about making sure that neither of them spent even a dime more than they absolutely had to.

She was so trusting, he thought, letting his eyes carefully read over the paper in his hand. Without him, who knew what would have happened to her. She would probably be out a couple hundred bucks.

Then again, she was, for all intents and purposes, alone right now.

Liano shook off the thoughts again. She would be fine. Sophie may have been naïve, but she wasn't stupid. She had learned from him, after all. She would be fine. Maybe this would even be good for both of them. Maybe she would be able to get some independence from him, and he would be able to back up a bit. This was going to be a learning experience.

He snorted to himself. If he kept worrying, he would be here all day. He had already been attempting to read the paper in front of him for, he glanced at the small, gothic looking digital clock with blue numbers that Sophie had given him after he had been late for the hundredth time, twenty-eight minutes.

Calmer than he had been for the entire day, he leaned back in his black rolling chair, and focused his brilliant mind. If he could manage to graduate early, he could read a piece of paper while being worried.

Almost against his will, time passed. His leg bounced up and down as he focused, not allowing his mind to stray at all. It was the only sign of his discomfort that he allowed himself to show, if only because he was alone.

There was a knock at the door, and he distractedly told whoever it was to come in. He didn't look up, and the person didn't speak. After a moment, he sighed to himself in his head.

"Look, Sophie, I'm a bit busy right now. We'll talk later, alright?" He murmured. It had taken him most of the day to finally focus, and he wasn't breaking his concentration for anything, unless he wanted to pull another all-nighter.

Normally, he would be begging for her forgiveness by now, but as of now, that was impossible. Someone cleared their throat, and he felt himself freeze at that decidedly male voice. He forced himself to relax, and glanced over the paper.

Four people were in the room, besides himself, looking slightly cramped and uncomfortable. They were clearly police officers, and the only woman of the group looked like she wished that she could be anywhere but there. She was pretty, with golden blonde hair, light brown eyes, and a kind face that was slightly twisted with her own discomfort.

Two of the men, one of the two at the lead, and one next to the woman, looked similar. Brothers or cousins, Liano wondered, probably cousins. The one in the back didn't look like he wanted to be anywhere near the two men in the front. In fact, if he was reading him right, the one in the back was scared of the man who looked similar to him.

He took that as a warning. The one in the front had brown hair, lighter than his own but identical in color to the other, younger cop, with cruel grey eyes. He was built almost like a body builder in size. Liano wasn't sure, but it almost looked like the man's muscles had their own muscles. It was weird to see a man that bulky forced into the dark blue uniform that appeared that it would split if the man so much as breathed.

The fourth person was clearly the one who worked with Mr. Muscles, as he seemed more resigned and level headed than the other. His hair was a lighter blonde than the woman's, and he looked to be the oldest of the group. The senior officer was probably used to the larger man, and they appeared comfortable with each other. That didn't stop the fourth to look at him with disgust, similar to his larger partners hatred.

Liano wondered if, maybe, one of them were related to a client or the person he was supposed to watch. It was possible, but not likely. It was, however, the only reason that he could think of that would warrant the looks he was receiving from the older two.

He resisted the urge to clear his throat, and peered carefully over at the four in his office. He raised an eyebrow, and waited for a moment before speaking. "Is there something I can do for you, officers?" He was careful to keep his tone polite, but not overly inviting. He just wanted them to leave so that he could get back to work. He wasn't allowed to work on the break in until he finished up here, which was enough of an incentive to make him wish that these people were anywhere else.

The four exchanged looks, before the oldest of the four stepped forward. "Mr. Altieri, I presume?"

Liano inclined his head slightly. "Indeed, officer. What can I do for you this fine afternoon?"

"Do you know a Sophia Lucas, Mr. Altieri?" The man asked.

Liano felt his spine stiffen and glanced down at the only photo on his desk, one of him and Sophie on her graduation in a plain, dark wood frame. He couldn't have been more proud of her that day. "That I do. Is Sophie alright? She isn't in any kind of trouble is she?"

If she was, he bet it was because of that loser, Trevor. How she could be so blind to that boy, in his eyes Trevor was being cowardly and thus not a man, he didn't know.

The bulky officer moved forward and slammed his hands on Liano's desk, sneering at him. "You know the answer to that, you sick bastard! You know what you did to her!"

"What are you talking about? Is she okay? Is she hurt? Where is she? Why didn't she call me?" He felt himself start to panic, and shoved it down. She was fine, she had to be. She was resourceful, and clever. There was no way that she wouldn't have called him if she was hurt. Even after what he had said to her the day before, she wouldn't have been able to resist needing comfort from him.

A file was thrown harshly on his desk, and the bigger officer's eyes were looking at him with such venom that Liano wished he could melt into his chair. After a moment of silence, he carefully reached for the file. Something in his gut told him that he didn't want to open the file. He didn't want to see whatever was there. As soon as his fingers brushed over the file, he knew that Sophie wasn't okay.

He forced himself to take a breath and opened the file. He knew that his blue- hazel eyes were opened wide and completely unguarded. For once in his life, he didn't care. His mind raced, trying to understand what he was seeing. He couldn't though. It didn't matter how many people he had seen die over the years, just seeing the bloodied corpse with her face twisted in eternal pain was more than he could understand.

The pictures were brutal, and bloody. He felt a horrified hatred take over his soul. She didn't deserve this. She should have lived for many, many more years, settled down with whoever she chose, and had the family that both of them craved but neither understood.

He felt his breathing speed up. He had known her since his days in the orphanage. She had come in when he had been six, and she had been four. Her parents had been killed by a drunk driver, and from the day that they had met, she had been his.

Not in the way that most people seemed to think, of course, but she had been the only one that he had opened up to. She had been the only one who came to his college graduation, and had snuck out of the orphanage when he had graduated high school early. She was his best friend, and the only person he ever knew that he would always love.

He felt his eyes close, and weaved his fingers together on his desk, before resting his chin on them. It didn't make sense! She was only twenty-two! She was working an okay job, with a really low chance of getting robbed. She never made any enemies, because of her kind, if not a bit cold, personality. She was dating a guy, a nice guy who didn't understand what she had been through, but he was nice.

After taking a moment to shove back his emotions, he opened his eyes again, and looked calmly at the four officers in his office.

"Wha... She," He took a deep breath and tried to reign himself in. He could break later. Right now, he needed to be strong. "I'm sorry to hear that." He said honestly, if not coldly. That was how he reacted to death. Detachment was the only thing that could keep him sane. Well, that and Sophie. Now, he was going to have to figure out how to live in a world without Sophie.

He wasn't sure how he was supposed to react. He knew that to most people, he would sound heartless, but he had been hiding how he felt for so long that he wasn't sure how normal people would take the news. Sure, under normal circumstances, he would be able to pull up the right façade, but this was anything but normal.

"What happened?" He couldn't help but ask. How had this happened? She was smart. She knew how to live on the streets and stay safe, just as he did. She wouldn't have been taken down easily. She would have fought, and he knew that Sophie would have tried to take down whoever went after her.

He glanced down at the pictures again, and forced himself to look at it like it would have been any other dead body. Marks around the subjects neck indicated strangulation. It appeared that the subject was a part of a brutal beating, probably with multiple people against the victim.

As hard as he tried, he couldn't believe that anyone would hurt Sophie. She was an angel, sweet, kind, caring. Everything he wasn't. As soon as he realized that more than likely, the last thing Sophie saw was the face of her killer, rage went through him. Had she been thinking about him? Wishing that he was there to save her?

He knew he did.

The worst part, in his mind, was when it clicked in his mind that his last words to her were toxic and cruel. Maybe she had been so upset that she hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings. Maybe it was his fault. No, he thought with more loathing than he had ever felt coursing through his veins, it was his fault. Not all his fault, but he would make sure that whoever else was to blame would pay before he himself did.

Part of him didn't want to know if she blamed him in her last moments, but most of him was stuck between seething in rage and balling his eyes out. Since he knew that he could do both the moment he was left alone, he shoved the emotions back until he could deal with it, if he ever could.

The body building officer that had spoken was watching him with disgust and rage, not that Liano could blame him. He may not have known how to react, but he knew that most people would have been both frozen and horrified. He was, granted, but he wasn't the type to show it. The more he felt, the less he showed, as Sophie used to say.

Another pang went through his heart, but he shoved it back again.

Later, he thought desperately, he would deal with this later.

The officer stepped forward, and the other three tensed, as if they were expecting him to do something. "She was raped, beaten then suffocated by a sick bastard." The man spat.

Liano felt his eyes widen again. His heart pounded in his chest and his eyes stung as something clicked in his brain. They thought he had killed her.

The thought echoed through his head as he looked in disbelief. The fact that they actually thought he was capable of this was beyond what he could understand.

One of the other officers stepped forward and put his hand on the first officer's shoulder. "Mark." The older warned calmly, with his own looks towards Liano more easily suppressed. "By the book, Mark, by the book."

"Look at him!" The body obsessed officer, Mark by the sound of it, hissed at the second, never taking his eyes off of Liano. "He doesn't give a fuck that we know he did it! Who knows how many other women this sick bastard has gotten off on as killed them?"

The older shook his head slightly. "We don't know anything yet, bud, and unless we wanna let this guy go because you screwed up, then you need to calm the fuck down right now."

He heard the officers, and the part of his mind that was paranoid as hell wouldn't let him not listen, but most of his mind wasn't even in the room, it was on Sophie. Sweet Sophie didn't deserve this, and if he was understanding what they were saying, he would be arrested soon, and not able to find her killer. He mentally shook off the thought.

He may have been cocky, well self assured, he thought half heartedly, and sure, he was smarter than he probably should have been, but he wasn't a killer. He wasn't stupid, he knew that if he ever crossed that line, he wouldn't be able to stop himself. He knew that the moment he watched the light go out in somebody's eyes, he wouldn't be able to not see it again and again.

Most people were capable of murder, Sophie used to tell him, but only a few wouldn't be able to stop should they start. He knew that he was one of those people. He would have to be blind and stupid not to be aware of that, and he was conscious of the fact that he would need to be put down if he were to start.

While the officers were arguing with each other, they weren't paying attention to him, and he knew that if he ever wanted to figure out what happened to his best friend. He knew that if he started killing, he wouldn't be able to stop.

But he also knew that for Sophie, he wouldn't mind giving up his humanity and his soul. If he was going to do this, he knew he would need to be arrested so that later, when he had slaughtered her killer just as brutally as they had killed her, the cops would be able to find him. He wouldn't run and disappear into the underground, even if he could. He was going to get his revenge, but wouldn't be able to do so without drenching his hands in blood.

Once he had made sure that whoever had hurt his Sophie was gone, then he would take out the last person guilty of hurting her, himself. He wasn't stupid, he knew he would either die in a gunfight against the officers that would stalk him, or be arrested and allow himself to spend the rest of his life in the worst place that he could find. Maximum security prison, probably. He wouldn't end his own life, he didn't deserve that relief, but if he died, well he wouldn't be upset per say.

The officers quieted down, and his hands went under his desk to hide the one thing that he knew would be able to help him later. He stroked his list of people he could easily blackmail, or at least where it was hidden, before straightening up, and calmly pushing himself away from his desk. He was going to have to go with the officers, allow himself to be arrested, maybe even charged, before he broke out.

Considering the people that he knew, it would be simple to manipulate certain people to help him get out. Once he was, though...

He hoped the freak that had hurt his Sophie would be praying for mercy, because Liano knew that he certainly didn't have any to give to the sick bastard that had hurt his Sophie in the worst possible way.

He couldn't help but roll his eyes when all four officers went straight for their guns, and ignored it, standing calmly and grabbing his black jacket from where he had rested it against the back of his chair. He wasn't going to let himself get killed just yet. He would have to play the game more carefully than he ever had to before. This time, it wasn't just his life at stake, but Sophie's memory.

He wouldn't screw up this early. As of now, though, he needed to get the officers out of his office and himself to the station, just so he could see what he had to work with. They expected a cocky, cold, uncaring bastard? He would be that, and worse.

He glanced at the picture on his desk once more, before his eyes moved to the photograph in the file and hardened. He could do this. No, he would do this.

For Sophie.

He took a deep breath and pulled his most confident voice out of the depths of his soul. It would help that the four officers would only see what they wanted to, rather than what he was actually portraying. As long as he didn't show too much emotion, they would think that not only was he the killer, but he was dangerous, making it easier for him to possibly get caught in a gunfight later on.

"I take it you are going to bring me in for questioning, and won't believe me either way. I would rather be surrounded by other people instead of, ehem, accidentally being hit by a stray bullet, if you know what I mean." He shrugged on his jacket and buttoned it, before walking across the room to grab his cane that was more for causing people to see a weakness that wasn't there. He held the metal carefully in his hand, and glanced down at the fox head at the top of the cane, and moved his eyes down to the sleek black wood. It would need to be cleaned again soon, he noticed calmly, and repainted as well. That one little sliver on his cane almost was enough to make him break. But, he hardened his resolve for Sophie's sake, before looking over his shoulder at the four cops that were looking at him as if he was insane. He mentally shrugged, he had been looked at like that for years, surely people didn't think that he was still affected by it. "Shall we go?"

Oh yes. He could do this.

For Sophie.


	3. The Lock- Up

Liano resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he sat calmly, if a bit stiffly, in the hard plastic chair. It was cool enough to make goose bumps rise on his skin. He knew why, of course, but that didn't stop the spark of amusement that he felt when he realized that they expected normal interrogation techniques to work on him.

The poor fools didn't know what they were getting into. He had already refused to talk four times, and each time, they would leave, but the temperature would lower, just a bit. He knew it was to slow down one's mind, but it didn't exactly work on him for several reasons.

For one, he knew all the tactics that the police knew, as he had once dreamed of becoming an interrogator. He had absorbed any book on the topic that he could get his hands own.

The second reason, and the biggest reason he was practically immune to this, was that he had lived on the streets for longer than he cared to admit. He had been kicked out of the group home as soon as his birthday hit, and seeing as his birthday was just before winter set in, he had learned to have a high tolerance to the weather.

He wasn't really sure for how long he had lived mostly on the streets, going as far as using a dummy address to apply for college, but he had. It had been an interesting challenge to try and pretend that he had a home and was semi-well off, rather than being a homeless bum who was only good at gathering information from those around him. He hated it, but it was a necessary act.

Half an hour later, the door slammed closed, the taller cop was wrestled out of the room, and he couldn't help but laugh. It seemed as if the fifth time was not the charm for those idiots.

He reached up, ducking his head at the same time so that he could feel his forehead where a bruise was probably forming. A bit of blood ran into his eye, and he wiped it away calmly. He hadn't expected the bigger cop to yank his head down against the table when Liano had refused to answer his questions as soon as they were asked.

Why the man was so offended, he didn't know. He was fairly sure that his birth father had regretted copulating with the cops mother, though. Honestly, he thought, shaking his head slightly as it pulsed, what a waste of sperm.

At this point, he assumed that either he needed to eat something soon, or he had a concussion. Seeing as he couldn't remember the last time he has sat down for a meal, he wasn't really willing to put either idea out yet. He wasn't really sure if his lack of memory was because he had been skipping meals again, or if it really was his head.

He mentally shrugged. Either way, it probably wasn't a good thing. It did, however, tell him that he needed to make the next, ehem, visit from the officers more interesting. It was time to start weaving the story that would ultimately be his downfall.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed the time, probably an hour again, when the doors slammed open once more. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief. Five times, they had come in to questions him, and on the last, Mr. Body builder had slammed his head against the table twice before the calmer older officer had pulled him off and yanked his partner out of the room.

Liano wanted to laugh when, rather than sending in a different officer, maybe the other two that had been at his arrest, the two that had been trying to interrogate him the whole time came back in. If he wanted to, he could have either asked for a lawyer, or mentioned that he was going to sue them for assault. He could have, but that would have messed everything up.

He didn't exactly want to be beaten by the cop with a steel fist, but he also needed to have dirt on them, just in case. Whether they thought that he didn't know the interviews were recorded, or of they simply thought that he was too stupid to know his rights, Liano didn't know.

That didn't bother him though. He had never minded being underestimated, if only because when he showed that he was far more than they thought he was, it made for some interesting pictures.

The body builder, who he was starting to call Mr. BB in his head, stood at the far wall and crossed his bulging arms over his chest. Liano couldn't help but blink at the sadistic smirk on the others face. It was both unexpected and annoying, but he could handle whatever they threw at him with little to no problem.

"Mr. Altieri," the other cop said calmly, "we really need to know what happened between you and Ms. Lucas. As you may have noticed, I am not someone who enjoys being physical, but my partner..."

Liano heard the threat clearly. If he didn't speak, the other officer would step back, unless, more than likely, the other man went too far. That hardly bothered him though. He knew that he would be sore for a few days, but not maimed or disfigured. They wouldn't want him to be able to run to anyone else.

His eyes moved between the two men, before understanding filled his features. "How many?" He asked calmly, staring into the hate filled eyes of Mr. BB.

"How many what?" the bigger man snapped back, clearly annoyed that Liano didn't fear him.

"How many people have you hurt in your search for the truth? More importantly, how any of them only confessed to the crime to get you to stop hurting them? I know bullies when I see them, officer, and you and your partner certainly match the description." That was true. They were classic, power obsessed, so- called hero's. They thought that not only were they the heroes to their own stories, but took any injustice as a personal assault on themselves. That normally would not be a bad thing, except that when they made up their minds about someone, rather than searched for the truth, that person was guilty.

Had these two even questioned Trevor? Liano assumed that he was not the one to hurt her, he was about 90% sure, but he was still the romantic partner of the victim. Normally, that would mean that Trevor gave them his new, but somehow, he doubted that. The not quite man knew exactly how much he adored Sophie, and that he would rather kill himself than physically hurt her.

It didn't make sense that they went to him, and thought he was guilty, even before he had met them.

Nothing about this situation made any sense! He wanted to reach up and pull on his hair until the world made sense again, but as he was in the middle of an act, he couldn't afford the weakness.

A thought, fleeting but small, danced through his brain. He felt himself freeze. He knew that the two officers thought that it was due to their threat, but it was something much more simple.

Someone had framed him.

The only reason they would have thought that he had killed Sophie was if there was something, anything, convincing them of it. That said, whoever had given his name must have given a good reason to go after him. The younger cop may have been a hot-headed example of a pitiful human species, but the older one had to know better than to just guess. For that matter, he doubted the older one would even threaten someone without having evidence that they had done the crime.

"What," he asked slowly, "is your reason for believing that I would be brutal enough to arrange something like this?"

The younger cop sneered at him. "Why? Because you want to know where you messed up?"

"If that is what you wish to think." Liano glanced down at his hands and inspected his nails. If he was right, the action would tick off both men like nothing else he could have done. Sure enough, his collar was grabbed and both he and the chair ended up against the wall. His head bounced slightly, and he resisted the urge to hiss in pain.

 

Maybe this wasn't his best idea.

Then again, he couldn't exactly think of anything better. Well, that wasn't true either. He had thought of several possible scenarios but none of them would have the results he needed. Right now, he needed to be hurt so that he could use it against them later. Hopefully, he wouldn't need to, but having cops that owe him a favor, well more of them, would certainly be useful in the long run. The younger cop with more muscles than brain cells may be more trouble than he was worth, but not the older cop with a brain. Oh no, that one clearly had a conscious, and if Liano was hurt, the cop would feel guilty.

That guilt was going to be enough, hopefully, to get the information he needed.

"Mark!" The older officer snapped after it was clear that the bigger cop was going to hurt the weaker looking murderer.

Liano resisted the urge to smirk. That was good. It meant that he wasn't completely insane for letting the bigger man do this to him.

The officer turned to him, and scowled . "Don't think this means I'm on your side, you smug bastard. I just don't want to be charged as an accessory to your murder. Maybe if you stopped trying to purposely piss off Officer Peterson, we would actually be somewhere with this mess. The more you refuse to cooperate with us, the longer this is going to take."

He felt an eyebrow raise. Was that the name of the body builder? He tried to think back, but couldn't exactly remember if any of the officers had introduced themselves. However, he also wasn't stupid. The older officer would have to do a lot better than that. "The longest you can hold me in the state of Texas without charging me is 72 hours. If you were going to file charges, and arrest me, you would have already done it. That means that you have little to no evidence, there was no witnesses, and after this, you won't be able to hold me here. Tell me, why should I say anything?"

Peterson slammed his hand on the cold metal table and looked like he was about a second away from strangling him. "Why would you know that?"

The other officer gave Peterson a look. "Done this before, have we?" He asked calmly.

Liano resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Honestly, didn't these people read? If they were trying to find out anything about him, he did have a website that practically had his every accomplishment on it. If they had bothered looking at it, they would have seen his school information. They would have known that he had graduated with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and how he had a fascination with both interrogation and information gathering.

To be fair to them, he didn't have a picture of himself on his website. Most people would have, but seeing as he did undercover things, he didn't want to risk someone finding out who he was before he got whatever he wanted from them. No, pictures were too dangerous.

Not that he really had many of them to begin with. He had a grand total of five pictures of himself, and all of them had Sweet Sophie next to him.

His heart hurt for a moment, but he shoved it back, focusing his attention on the officers who, once again, were seething at his lack of answers. He considered for a moment, staying quiet and just waiting until Peterson's temper exploded, but decided against it.

"No." He answered honestly, not that they would know it.

"Then why do you know all this stuff?" The older cop asked calmly.

Liano considered, for a moment, if he should tell the truth or not. After, he did what he did best. He mixed the truth with a bit of a lie. "I graduated with a degree in criminal justice. I considered going to the police academy, but I couldn't afford it." There, he thought smugly. Truth, certainly, but not all of it.

Most people would think that he was ashamed by the way he avoided talking about it, but well, he simply saw it as a fact not to be thrown in everyone else's faces. He had better things to talk about, honestly. After all, the rest of the world had to deal with his perfection and not explode, so why would he want to stress it even more by bragging about something that quite a few people have already done?

He mentally paused for a moment. That, for some reason, sounded a bit narcissistic, didn't it? Then again, it wasn't narcissism if it was true.

"There were bruises around the victim's neck that will match something of yours, and some of the other marks look like they were made by a cane, the same size, might I add, that you carry with you. Add to the fact that her last message was to a Mr. Trevor Martin, and it said how much she hated you, and how you hurt her, as well as the fight that her boyfriend told us about, and the fact that someone matching your description was seen leaving the scene, well, it doesn't look good for you, Mr. Altieri. Oh, and let's not forget that she was found within a block of your home, and that the last person to actually see her alive was you... I take it you see where I am going with this?" The older cop told him with a small smirk.

Liano wanted to throw up. He didn't know she had been killed so close to his home. He didn't know that she was beaten with a cane. He didn't know that she thought he hated her, or that she hated him, right before she died. He knew she would be upset, sure, but hate? He had known and protected her since she was four from everything he could. He would never hate her.

For that matter, he wasn't sure if he ever could hate his sweet Sophie. There was literally nothing that she could do to make him hate, despise, loathe, or even dislike Sophie. He may not have agreed with all of her choices, but he supported her through every decision she could ever make.

That said, the logical part of his mind simply scoffed. They didn't have anything solid, but it was more information than he expected to get. At least one of the people that killed Sophie looked similar to him, at least from further away. So, one of them had shoulder length brown hair, a woman perhaps?, was thin, slender, and pale. It wasn't much, but it was something.

His mind burned the information in the deepest, darkest parts of his mind. Everything he heard, he would use during his revenge. When he found out who hurt Sophie, he would pay them back tenfold. Even those who may not have physically harmed her would lose their lives. If he was in a particularly dark mood, he knew that he might just hunt down their loved ones and make them suffer.

Not kill them, he reminded himself. Only those who hurt Sophie would die. The others would be left alive. He may maim them, mildly, but they would be alive and mostly able to function once again.

"Let me see if I understand your thought process." Liano said, twining his fingers together in his lap, and started straightening his spine a bit. "Multiple suspects beat, raped, and murdered your victim. From the way that you speak, I can presume that the two major reasons that you believe that I was involved would be because I use a cane, and because the victim and I were in the middle of an argument. Both of which, I assure you, are true facts. The only problem, bearing in mind those two things, is that I wouldn't be able to take the victim's life. Every human being is capable of committing murder. Both the victim and I believe that to be one of the few truths of the world. That said, it is more likely that I will wake up in an alternate universe as the president of the united states where our flag colors were changed to yellow, orange, and neon green, than it is that I would do so much as raise a hand to Sophia."

He knew that neither of the men would believe him, but that was alright. He knew himself well enough to know exactly what he was capable of, sick, twisted things that would make any who saw question his humanity, but he also knew that he couldn't hurt her. Even if he wanted to, which he didn't, he wouldn't be able to stomach hurting her, let alone leave after doing it with his mind intact.

He wasn't stupid. He knew that he danced along the edges of sanity for many years. People couldn't see some of the things he had seen, or done the things he had done, and still manage to keep their minds fully sane.

From the outside, he was sure that he would seem suspicious. If he had been the one investigating the case, he was sure that his lead suspect would be himself. It was so difficult for most people to understand exactly where his mind was, and how much he truly adored Sophie. She was the only ray of sunshine that he ever knew. She was, in layman's terms, his.

If he tried to voice it, he knew that most people would try and say that they had a romantic relationship, if not a sexual one, but that was so far from the truth in his mind that it was laughable. She was a little sister, or, more accurately according to her, she was his daughter. He fussed over her, helped her with her fiery red locks, comforted her from her nightmares, soothed her panic, and simply adored her.

She may have only been two years younger, and she may not have needed him as much now that she was grown, but he had still been the closest thing to a parent that she had since she was little.

The officers looked at him strangely, and he knew that, frankly, he deserved it. He had spoken in a completely detached way. He had spoken as if they were speaking of the weather, and he had done so on purpose. He couldn't allow himself to sound fond, or allow them to see how much that he cared for her since she was young.

No, the more they knew, the less likely they were to go after him as violently as he deserved once his hunt was over. He would be carefully searching through his web of informants until one of them knew something, maybe something that they didn't even know they knew, until he had spilt the blood of all those who were involved. While he was hunting the scum that hurt Sophie, he would also be leaving a trail of blood so that, once he had extracted the last of his revenge as brutally as possible, he would lie in wait for law enforcement to close in on him.

He may bring a gun with him, wave it around a bit like a good little psychotic murderer. If they shot him down, then they would complete his revenge on the last person who hurt Sophie.

If he had his way, he would choose who took his life. It may seem like Peterson was more likely to want to shoot him, but the man was more into mindless bloodshed than actually knowing anything about justice. Besides, he thought with a mental flick of his hand, the man would make a terrible hero.

If he was going to do this from a story book standard, then he would be the villain, and he would, at the end of his revenge, be killed by a hero.

Most people, including the two in front of him, lived as if they were the hero and expected to get the fame and riches that being 'good' seemed to involve. Liano, on the other hand, knew that he wasn't a good man. He was a cocky, self assured, manipulative, smooth talker. He didn't fit in with the heroes.

Besides, the only person they seemed to hurt was their villains. They didn't seem intelligent, and seemed unable to focus on anything other than getting waking into their dreams.

He would be walking into his nightmares.

He still wasn't entirely sure if he could pull this off, but if he was going to, he needed to plan. He needed to think, break, and come back stronger than ever until the day he finally shattered.

Until then, somehow, he would make the officers hate him with every bone in their bodies. If they wanted to be a hero, then he would shape himself into the perfect villain.

They stayed in silence for a few more moments, before the older cop sat down heavily and stared into Liano's eyes. "Look, Mr. Altieri, I will be blunt. I don't like you. I think that you are a cocky, arrogant, bastard, but I also don't think that you are stupid enough to actually admit to anything. You are the type of criminal that annoys me more than anything else. You are smart, I'll give you that, but even the smartest criminal is nothing more than a low life who threw their lives away. The reason I'm telling you this is because I know that you are smart enough to understand why taking a plea is not only the easiest for all three of us, and the poor girls family, but also it's the only thing that would make sense. You seem like you're a logical man. Prove it to me. Tell me what happened between you and Ms. Lucas."

Liano glanced away. "She's an..." He paused and pursed his lips. "She was an orphan." He corrected quietly, if a bit less calm than he would have liked.

"It was an accident then? You and your friends were going out, getting drunk, doing normal twenty something activities, when you ran across Ms. Lucas. You didn't mean for it to go as far as it did. Maybe you had sex with her before. Maybe you weren't expecting her to mind that it was in an alley way and you expected her not to be mad any more. You didn't really want to hurt her, you just wanted her to stop fighting. Am I right?"

Bile rose in his throat, and he had to look away and swallow a few times before he felt like he could actually speak without throwing up. His eyes filled with hatred, and he was careful not to meet the other eyes watching him.

How dare that man think that he could hurt Sophie. It was one thing to say he killed her, but this? This was on another level. Everything in him fought not to show the two men exactly why people learned to leave him alone. He wanted to, but he needed them to think that he had hurt her.

He mentally laughed. He couldn't even think the word killed in reference to her. He had caught himself thinking as if she was fine, and that she would still be waiting for him as soon as he got out of here, laughing at what they thought he would do. But she wasn't, was she. She was gone, forever out of his reach.

He wasn't sure if he believed in an afterlife, but he hoped that she was at peace, or, at least, would be once he had taken revenge for her.

Liano glanced to the side, unable to even tell the lie that would cement his plans. He needed to say that he had hurt her, but she had been alive when he had left. He needed to tell them how sweetly she had screamed. He felt sick just thinking about spewing the words.

He couldn't say it, not that he wouldn't, but every time he opened his mouth, his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, making words impossible. For Sophie, though, for her sake, he could say it, even if it lured his fragile mind closer towards the edge of insanity.

Mentally, he slapped himself. They were words, nothing more, nothing less. They meant nothing.

He had found himself in many situations before where he had to weave together words in order to do something that would make most people balk away. He had managed to lie in situations that would have left people trembling at the feet of the men.

"She was alive." He heard himself whisper.

The older officer leaned forward, while Peterson clenched his fist by his side.

"She was alive." He repeated. "She may not have been alright, but she was alive." That was true. She had been hurt, destroyed even, by him but she had been alive. He may not have physically touched her, but as long as he was vague, he could manage to tell mostly the truth, and only have to exaggerate a few details.

Peterson moved over to him and yanked his head back so that he was staring into the bright light, as well as the twisted face of the man. "She screamed, didn't she? She screamed for mercy, and you hurt her. Didn't you, bastard?"

From the little he knew about what happened to her, he wouldn't be surprised, but then again, it was Sophie. "She yelled." He muttered carefully, "I just wanted her to go away. I wanted it to stop."

He had, he really had.

"I yelled back. Then, suddenly, she stopped." The tears in his eyes were anything but fake, even if he would never admit it. "She was alive, though. She was still breathing when went inside."

To them, it sounded as if he was confessing to assault, at least, but that wasn't true. He was telling them what had happened, and letting them jump to their own conclusions.

"I didn't want to hurt her. I never wanted to, but I couldn't think. Nothing was right, and I couldn't..." His head bounced off the table as Peterson shoved him down.

He heard them talking, but all he could think about was how much he wished he hadn't shoved her away. She had needed him, without even knowing it, and he hadn't been there. He had failed to protect her.

A brief moment of intense self hatred took over his mind, and he bowed his head a bit too keep them from seeing his eyes. While he could hide most things, he wasn't sure if he could hide this.

He was forced up for a moment, and the cuffs went back on after a moment of freedom.

A part of him was terrified, but from this point on, he knew that doubting himself would just end in a disaster. He needed to trust himself, and his plan. He straightened his shoulders, deadened his eyes, and calmed his breathing.

He could do this. As soon as he saw who exactly was in the jail that he would be waiting in, he would be able to properly plan. Best case scenario, someone who owed him would be in the jail and he could use them to get what he needed to get out of there.

Worst case, he thought with a slight grimace, is that someone who knows who he is and what he does is going to be there. He certainly had a good few people who owed him, but with every ally that he had, he had at least three enemies. Of those who owed him, only a few wouldn't take advantage of him being in jail in order to permanently shut him up.

That would be unfortunate, but he could find a way around it if he really needed to. If there was one thing he was good at, it was bull shitting.


	4. The Agreement

Two days. That was how long he had to put up with the looks and the burning eyes. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that it would only get worse from there. Once people knew exactly what they said he did, it would get worse. Rapist were hated in jail. Not as much as child molesters or child killers, but they were still up there. Especially if they thought he was actually the one to take her life. 

It had been fairly quiet so far. He had spent most of his time observing and being observed. So far, he noticed a grand total of three people that owed him a favor. A guard, he had found the man's wife after she had run off with her nineteen year old boyfriend to Kailua, was the first. That man was probably the last one he wanted to mess with. The guard was too short tempered to do much, and seemed to be against him more so than the other two, probably because the man asked to look at the crime scene photographs. 

The second was a slightly more useful twenty- something year old who he helped get back most of his fortune after his father died. He, knowing him, was probably here for speeding tickets or not paying for his kids once again. Despite the money, the young man was still mostly useless. Unless he actually got bail or something. Then he might call in the favor. 

It was the third one that he favored. Arnold Webber was an ex drug runner whose sister had been kidnapped. Liano helped get her back, and gave him a new life with his sister. Most people, once they were in the gang, were trapped for the rest of their lives. Not so much for Webber. He was one of the lucky ones. 

Webber also had an added bonus of giving him bit of information every now and then. He was one of Liano's more regular informants when it came to the Nightmare Knights, the gang that thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. He was also the only one out of the three that preferred not to lie out of his ass. Webber was, for lack of better word, a southern gentlemen. 

He knew that the time to approach the man was coming up. He had his first court date soon, to see if he was eligible for parole or not. As it was, he wanted to be gone before then. It would make the police more irritable, thus making them pursue him more aggressively. 

Strangely, Liano actually wanted law enforcement to be pissed at him. It would make it harder to get his revenge, but at the same time, it would make it easier to get the ending that he wanted. 

But, he couldn't let that happen yet. 

No, now was the time to lurk in the dark and uncover the skeletons hidden in the closets of as many inmates as he could. In his mind, there was no such thing as useless information. Sure, some information came with an expiration date, but that hardly meant anything if used correctly. And if there was one thing he was good at, it was remembering things he probably shouldn’t know. 

He hardly remembered when his obsession with knowing what was going on started, but as long as he knew when it ended, he couldn't care less. 

For a lot of people, especially the ones that were innocent, they used their time talking to lawyers and trying to get out of the so called hell. 

Liano scoffed at that. This was nothing. At least they got fed three times a day here, and had access to both a toilet and a bed, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. He had been forced to survive on things that were far different. At least here, he didn’t have to dig through the trash to find the things he needed. It was really all that he could do, back in the day, to find a place where he had the highest chance of waking up. 

He didn’t have to worry about that here. Mostly, he mentally corrected himself. Most of the time, people were content to leave him to his own devices and pretend that he didn’t exist. Granted, it wasn’t as often as he would have hoped, but it was still something. 

That wasn’t to say that he hadn't had any attempts on his life so far. There had been one last night, even if it wasn’t very, shall we say, interesting at the time. 

He almost threw his hands up in exasperation when he saw the man hovering over him. He couldn't help but wonder if there was a sign on him, somewhere that he couldn't see of course, that said something like 'Hello, my name is Liano, and I'm new here. Please feel free to stab me with random objects until you have either gotten revenge, got bored of having your ass beaten, or if you simply end up actually killing me. Speaking of prizes, it's your lucky day! You are the ninety- eighth person to try and stab me. Congratulations on your originality for deciding that I would never suspect anything at all. And yes, in case you are wondering, clearly, I'm an idiot and stabbing me is more likely to actually work.' 

Yeah, clearly they didn’t understand that people had tried to stab him before, and it never worked. Why everyone thought that stabbing him was a better idea than, say, shooting him, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was wasting time on the small fries that seemed to think they were worth his time. 

As if he didn’t have better things to do than decimate yet another attempt on his life. One day, he was going to pay someone else to do it. 

He hid a smile. Never having to do anything again while worrying about being shot sounded like heaven. It was probably good for his blood pressure as well to not become a human pincushion. 

While he was sure he could make the best pincushion in the world if he actually wanted that, but it sounded mildly unpleasant and probably more than tad bit painful. Not that he would know. Except for one other person who actually manage to get him, granted on his right shoulder blade more than his actual chest. That person had been the only person that he had seen who had actually gotten close enough to kill him. Everyone else was detoured in that he usually knew that they were coming to try and take his life. Watching them scramble around while he's sitting on his bed with either a book, a gun, or a knife of some kind.

One really creative gentleman had found out that Liano had been the one who had taken the pictures of the man and his mistress in several spots. When the man had snuck into his home, and pulled out a long sword that made little sense to his aching brain. Yes, he was one of the few people in the 20th century that could say he had almost been run through. 

The man had regretted it soon after, and, he guessed, for the rest of his rather painful life. 

He scoffed inwardly again. Poor fool. 

To be fair, it had been in his, shall we say, more volatile college days, but still. 

There had been one surprising side effect of that night. No one messed with him anymore. Or, should he say, most people learned the hard way that messing with him was probably the fastest way to make him wish to end their existences. 

Prisoners moving around dragged him out of his thoughts and he stood stiffly from the so-called bed. 

He knew what was coming, and honestly couldn't be bothered trying to fight it. As soon as he was in the cafeteria, he got his food and tried to find a place to sit. He knew that they would come as soon as he was seated.

The idiotic waste of ten million years of evolution, he mentally corrected. If you believe in that kind of thing, he thought with a small frown. 

He knew a lot of people were passionate about the debate between religion and evolution. Personally, he thought that the world would be a better place if people stopped talking about their personal views on subjects that ignited fury in so many other people. Or, at least, expected others to disagree with them. 

Sure enough, the group of four men that seemed to share a brain between them, came over to him. Just because he could fight them, didn't particularly mean he wanted to. 

The most he would do was write down their names in his mental notebook of doom, as he jokingly called it, and make life very interesting for them as soon as he got out of here. 

The guard who owed him particularly enjoyed knocking inmates down a few pegs until they lost their superiority complex.

Then again, so did he. 

They shoved him down against the table and he hid a sigh. 

“Hey girly.” The lead moron told him. 

Seeing as no one could see his face, he rolled his eyes. Just because he wore his hair long didn't mean he was a girl. More importantly, he had been called a girl, or a variation of that, since he had decided to grow his hair out at ten. 

Not that he was ever a very masculine looking man. He had always been more of the delicate looking type. Depending on what he was wearing, he could pass as either a guy or a girl. He didn’t really mind, he guessed, it amused him by this point. 

He had been offended at first, but it wasn’t worth being angry anymore. From the age of ten, he had been mistaken for a woman, but that was alright with him. There were few things that made him angry now days, and for most of his life, he had been fairly even tempered. 

"Good afternoon." Liano greeted calmly. He could yell, and curse, or simply fight, but he didn’t want to. It was going to be more trouble than it was worth, if he was being honest. The fight would go on his record, and no matter how illogical it was that he, a single person, would pick a fight with them, a group of four so called people, that was most likely what would be recorded. 

One day, he mentally cursed as they got closer , trying to intimidate him with their breath, he would make sure that they suffered for annoying him.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, they didn’t really matter to him, especially since he had to worry about the people who hurt Sophie, but they still annoyed him. 

Hopefully, this time, the guards would break it up before he got too sore. As it was, he was right to be concerned. Only one guard ran over to them after the beating, for there was no other word for it, had been going on for a few minutes. 

Thankfully, the guard was enough of a sap that it didn’t really matter who was being hurt as long as he stopped the fight. The second guard came over and helped him up. 

Liano met the man's eyes, and hid a smirk. He knew this guard. This guard already owed him a favor. Said favor was made larger since he didn’t stop the idiots from beating Liano up.

"How's Susan?" Liano muttered, just to make the man's eyes darken in guilt.

"Divorced twice now. Boy toy didn’t like that she lost her money when I divorced her." The man muttered back, barely moving his lips. "You know, Mr. Altieri, I-"

Liano cut him off with a look. They would discuss this, but only after they were some place that they couldn't be easily overheard. Slowly, they made their way out of the cafeteria. He made sure to lean heavily on the guard, just to prove his point to those around him. He was friends with the guards, and he was probably more than he seemed.

After all, it was well known that this specific guard was pretty much bribe proof. 

As soon as they were out of the room, Liano straightened his spine and pushed his shoulders back. "It appears that we need to speak, Mr. Laurence Thomas." He told the guard, strolling ahead a bit. "Come and find me in my cell before you leave for the day. Be prepared to speak quietly, if you would." 

While Liano didn’t really want to involve the guard much further than he already was, he didn’t have a choice in the matter. The man wasn’t going to do much, it would collide with his morals that he was even thinking about helping a prisoner. However, he didn’t need to do much. 

Mr. Thomas simply needed to keep the other inmates off of him, and throw certain suspicions off of him when the time came. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough. 

He mentally grimaced. He hated using favors, simply because people were more useful when they owed him, but for Sophie, he would call in every favor owed to him.

He wasn’t just another mindless criminal, even if he was sure he would have the reputation for it by the time he was done, but he would manage as long as he remembered why he was doing this. 

It was interesting, he thought with a small smile once he was away from the guard. He kept his head ducked, so that no one could see his face. His long dark brown hair fell in his face, and he resisted the urge to push it away. This wasn’t exactly what he was planning for his week, he was probably a bit behind on his work, but he doubted it would matter to anyone else. 

He scoffed mentally, shoving his hair behind his ears. He finally understood why so many people in prison preferred to keep their hair short. It was almost impossible to keep his hair from looking like a disaster area without using his usual products. Or, at least, a good brush.

His eyes rolled back in his head as he was grabbed and shoved against the wall. He resisted the urge to groan. He should have known that someone else would be brave, or stupid, enough to attack him in the corridor. A quick glance around told him all he needed to know. 

This was one of the prison's blind spots. If he moved three or more feet left or right, he would be seen, but as it was, he was invisible. He was fairly certain that his attacker was also invisible. Great.

Just what he needed to make the day as shitty as possible.

His head was slammed again against the cold wall by his hair, but he refused to give the person behind him the satisfaction of hearing that he was in pain. His head was spinning slightly, and hurt a bit, but it was nothing he both didn't deserve and couldn't handle. His ribs were just as sore, and every time he moved his right wrist, it sent a sharp pain through his body. He made a mental note to reenact this same scene with whoever was stupid enough to do this in the first place, just reversed.

Out of the corner of his eye, he finally saw who it was, and resisted the urge to sigh as his face tried to heat up. This, he couldn't help but think, was humiliating. At least the only person who saw it was someone who owed him, he thought with a mental sigh. 

Liano rested his head against the wall for just a moment, more to regain his balance than because of the pain. Once he had, he turned and gave the other a lightly annoyed look. 

“Was that really necessary?” He couldn't help but ask. Arnold Webber, the slightly tall ex drug runner who managed to get away from his old gang, thanks to him, simply smirked.

“ ‘Course it was.” Arnold told him through his thick southern accent. The man cracked his knuckles and got into Liano’s face with a strange look that he couldn't interpret. “Haven't heard from ya in, whatzit been, two years?”

Liano hummed in agreement, “Around there.”

“Righ’. So little old me just was servin’ his sentence and wha’ do ya know, I hear the name of a man tha’ I owe my sisters life too, and he's coming ta join us in this lowly jail.” The older man slurred. 

Liano was glad for the fact that the man wasn’t drunk. He was hard enough to understand without the added slur. 

For a moment, he wasn’t really sure if he could do this. If he did, it would make them, in his eyes, even. The thought of not having the man owe him was a strange one, but not entirely insane. He had known from the moment that he got in this hell hole that by the time he left, Arnold Webber would no longer owe him anything. 

If it had been slightly less dangerous, he might not think of them as even, but if either of them got caught, that was it. There was no redo's. There were no second chances as far as he was concerned. If he failed, if either of them failed, there would be nothing he could do. 

Liano braced himself for a moment, before meeting the light brown eyes with his own blue-brown. “I'm calling in a favor.” He told the man, watching as his eyes widened in surprise. 

Between the few of his informants that knew about each other, it was well known that he never called in the debts. He always dismissed those who tried to pay him back with a nod, and soon enough, they knew that it wasn't because the debt was forgiven. No, it was far more simple than that. The more people who owed him favors, the more information he had constantly coming into his ear. That, and he had always preferred to save things for a rainy day. 

And this? To him? Was the worst storm he had ever tried to fight through. For Sophie, he had kept every single favor without losing a single one, and had built a stockpile of information that he could use should she ever get in trouble. 

Now, though, he would tear apart his own network if it gave him the information on Sophie's death.

It only took a moment for the southern man to straighten his spine and meet Liano’s eyes with his own suddenly serious ones. The man knew that he wouldn't just call in a favor for no reason. Whatever made the investigator decide that this was important enough to free someone from his web, was something that Webber didn't want to be a part of. 

Luckily for Liano, Webber knew what he owed the younger man, and was a man of his word. 

Webber may have been someone who hid from the law and dabbled in some not so legal things, but he was a man who paid his debts. That was exactly why Liano chose him to be the one to carry out part of the next stage. He knew that Webber would do whatever needed to be done in order to complete the task he had been given.

“Wha’ do ya need?” Webber asked him, straightening up a bit and moving back a single step. The man knew that he wouldn’t just call in a favor for no reason. Webber knew that if he was being called in, there was a war coming. What kind, he wasn’t sure. It might have been between governments, but if that was the case, Altieri wouldn’t call him in. Oh, no. 

Webber was good for one thing, and one thing only. Gang information. Sure, he was also someone who could get his hands on guns and other weapons, but it was never as unknown as his gang information. He knew hierarchies, who was against who, what every gang in the area was known for, and other more interesting details.

And that was what Liano was counting on.

Liano turned towards the wall to hide his wavering smirk. This was going to be easier than he thought.

"Give me your word that this stays between us." Liano requested quietly. The other man obediently gave it him the required promise. With some of his informants, this wouldn’t be enough to keep them from talking about it, or sabotaging him. But Webber was different. Webber was, dare he think it, trustworthy. Or at least with this.

"I need my bag, my cane, a file from my office, and a distraction in two days at the latest." Liano told the man. More than likely, he would get his sister to get the things out of the prison, which was fine with him. As long as everything was waiting for him by the time he got out of here, he didn’t care how it was done. 

The bag had several tricks inside as well as several things that he wasn’t sure he could never see again. The cane had been with him for several years, and had it's own tricks that few people would expect. And the file? The file was the same one he had been puzzling over from his apartment. He had been so busy the next morning, the morning that his life had fallen apart.

Liano knew that the man would get the required items, and after he told the man to tell him when everything was ready, he went passed the blind spot and continued innocently towards his office. He refused to look behind him. The man would get everything he needed within a timely manner.

As soon as he had his… chat with Thomas this afternoon, he would be able to rest for the last of his day. Tomorrow would be busy, and the day after would probably push him further than he had ever attempted to go before, but he was sure he could manage. 

As long as he avoided the brain lacking, fish for spine, morons. Should they attempt to hurt him in the next few days, he would teach them exactly why no one messed with him anymore.

He felt like whistling for the first time in years. Everything was going according to plan. He would have, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was fairly certain that he would have been locked up in a totally different institution should he.

He imagined, if only for a moment, watching the faces of the people around him open in horror. There was a difference between a murdering rapist and an insane psychopath or sociopath. He was fairly certain that if he had seen the looks, he would have fallen over laughing. As it was, he chuckled lightly.  
This was going better than he thought it would. 

The only thing missing was…

A small smirk overtook his features as Matthew 'Batty Matty' Bates came into view. Batty Matty was the third person who owed him a favor. He was an extremely pale and thin man who looked like a strong wind would be enough to blow him away. His sandy blonde hair hung limply on his head, making the dark circles under his eyes more noticeable than they would have otherwise been. 

Batty Matty Bates may not have been much to look at, but the man was known in all the underground circles as being the best weapons dealer in the state. He was also trigger happy, and had a bit of a gambling problem. 

More than likely, the police had stumbled across an illegal poker game that Batty Matty just so happened to be at. No one was really sure, but a few people suspected that he had a connection to law enforcement, but wouldn’t admit it. As it was, Liano knew that his sister, Stephanie Morano, was married to an fbi agent, and worked in the secret service.

If it had ever gotten out, he and his family would most likely be killed. But, that wasn’t what made Batty Matty indebted to him. Oh no. Liano had gotten Batty Matty away from a loan shark who seemed to have tried to screw him over. Interestingly enough, the loan shark mysteriously disappeared a few days after Batty Matty had disappeared from the safe house. 

Not only did the man owe him for keeping the shark off of him until he could protect himself, Batty Matty owed him for keeping quiet about the murder. Sure, there was a chance that the man had simply run away once he realized exactly who he had ticked off, but it was doubtful. It was more likely that the man had been brutally murdered and cut up before being used as bait while the man went fishing. There was, apparently, something about human as bait that attracted bigger fish.

He was ninety percent sure that the police didn’t realize exactly who they had locked up. If they did, he certainly wouldn’t be in a low security holding jail like the rest of them.

"Who do they think you are?" Liano asked with amusement coloring his voice. The other man turned around and gave him a toothy smile. One of his front teeth was missing, and it was said that he ended up tearing the teeth out of the man who did it, and feeding them to him, before doing the same to the man's fingers and toes.

He was a very dangerous man, one that Liano consciously was courteous to as possible. 

"Well, if it isn't Two Brained Liano Altieri. Heard you got locked up, man. More's a pity. An' I go by Matt Connors. You can still call me Batty Matty, though." The man told him with a shrug. "S'long as the guards aren't around though. Don’t wanna give them a heart attack." 

He chuckled lightly. "Anyone would have a heart attack when they realized that they were holding the Batty Matty."

"Too true, Two Brains."

Liano tilted his head slightly. That nickname was new. "Where did you hear that one, Matty?" 

The man grinned again. "Oh? Didn’t you hear? Some guys were talking about favors, an' one of them mentioned you. Turns out, most of the guys there also owed you. According to the underworld, more people owe you than guys that don’t. Seein' as I'm one, I believe it. A couple guys came up with the name Two Brained Altieri, and it stuck." 

He ducked his head a bit. He wasn’t sure if he liked that or not, but he didn’t mind most people thinking that he was smarter than they were. If Sophie had been there, she would have smacked him over the head and scolded Batty Matty for increasing his already overly large ego. 

And there went his good mood, he thought bitterly. 

"They're saying you killed that girl, y'know." Batty Matty said, clearly trying to appear as if he didn’t have a care in the world. 

"I might as well have." He muttered, catching himself before he could rake his fingers through his hair. 

Batty Matty snorted. "That’s what I thought. You may be a thief, and swindle people for their money and memories, but ya ain't no killer. Luckily for ya, most people think the same as me. We aren't stupid enough not to smell a set up. So, what do ya need to bust out of here? Weapons? Cash? Cars? I can have a friend of mine set up a fake id for ya, and maybe she can give you a makeover too, since your face will be all over the news."

"Actually," Liano said slowly, trying not to smirk. "I was planning something a little more… subtle."

"Oh?"

"What do you know about death, Matty?" He asked, rather suddenly. The other man's eyes widened in fear.

"You aren't gonna…" Liano waited until he saw an idea form in the other man's blue eyes. "Oh, Oh! You're gonna fake your death?"

"Why look for a dead man?" Liano asked calmly. 

"Ya wouldn’t. It would give you a leg up on whoever framed ya." Batty Matty laughed and put his hand on Liano's arm. "Good on ya. Two Brained Altieri seems to fit you, doesn’t it." 

Liano carefully lifted his shoulder. "It seems to be growing on me." He admitted. And it was. Sure, it would be a bit of a pain to try and kill himself without actually dying, but it was the only way that he would be able to move in the shadows until he could finally step into light. Once he had taken care of the foolish idiots that thought they were better than him, he would turn himself in. 

He was looking forward to teaching the morons how to actually play the game.


	5. The Doctor

Some days, he thought, were not worth getting out of bed. This just so happened to be one of them. He had woken early that morning, knowing exactly what would need to happen for the next part of his plan to work.

He needed to let the idiots use him as a punching bag for long enough that they let him see a doctor. More specifically, he needed to get hurt enough so that he could get into a room alone with Dr. Kai Tyler, the next person on his list that he needed to contact.

The man usually worked at the hospital, but had gone to the prison to help several times when the cases were too severe for the nurse to take care of. Of course, as soon as he was taken to the infirmary, he was going to demand to speak to a doctor, insisting that a nurse wouldn’t be able to do a good enough job.

This, in layman's terms, was going to suck. He mentally rolled his eyes and hid a sigh as he stared down at his morning meal. This was hardly the first time he had allowed himself to get hurt for the sake of a case. But there was something different about today. He was going to do more than get caught somewhere he shouldn't be. He was going to poke and prod at their prides to get a reaction. With some luck, he would be able to get hurt without breaking anything. He needed to be able to heal quickly. Trying to gather information with a cast wasn't his idea of a good night. 

He was sitting at the table in the cafeteria, waiting for the fools to show up to get this started. He took a bite of what he assumed was toast, but looked more like soaked brick. It was disgusting enough to make him wish he could spit it out, but alas, he would need the calories to heal.

It was funny, in a strange, possibly psychotic way, how much he actually wanted a good fight. Sure, he wouldn't exactly be fighting back, and he would have to make it look like he took a bad beating without actually getting too hurt, but, he couldnt deny how much he wanted a good fight right now. 

The murmurs around him were easily ignored as he waited for the morons to decide that bothering him was worth whatever they might lose. If, of course, they had the thought processes of an ant, which he was strongly skeptical of. That didn't mean he wasn't keeping a part of his mind open for possibly useful information. He doubted that anyone would divulge their deepest, darkest secrets in the mess hall, but that was assuming they were intelligent. 

That wasn't to say they were all idiots. He knew better than to think that, but there were a vast majority of the people he had met that were sadly lacking in the brain cell department,.

Sure enough, he had been seated for less than ten minutes before the idiot quad decided to bother him. He needed to annoy them enough to make them actually hurt him. Luckily, or unfortunately, he was strangely good at getting a rise out of people by a natural mix of aloofness and insults.

"Hey there girly." The lead idiot greeted, reaching for his tray. "Give me that. You're on a diet, right fatty?"

Liano resisted the urge to sigh. "Oh look who crawled out of his mothers ass this morning. How's it feel to be away from your mom for the first time in your life?"

The other man sneered, and the rest of his little groupies closed in on him. "You think you're so much better than us just because you, what, had a fancy suit when you came in? Please, like that makes any difference in here." The guy scoffed at him.

"No, I think I'm better than you because at least I was planned. You are simply the result of a faulty condom." He said dryly. "Now, if you would leave, I have more important people to speak to. Like an ant. I suppose you are used to being compared to one, seeing as you have similar brain functions."

The lead idiot shoved him towards the table and laughed when his head hit the table. He blinked, well, that was one way to make it seem like he was hurt more than he actually was. Head injuries always bled more than most other places. "Guess Mr. Tough Guy isn't so tough after all."

He rolled his eyes, hiding it though his bowed head. "No, I'm just wondering if hitting you back is worth the hassle that the SPCA will give me once they found out." Liano couldn't help but wonder if they even understood what he was saying. Probably not, he admitted to himself. 

The lead idiot sneered, showing off his slightly crooked, yellow teeth. Liano wanted to back off, but not because he was intimidated, but because of the smell. "Just admit you're a little sissy girl who cries in her mother's skirt, and I might not let my friends here show you a few lessons."

Liano considered the man for a moment, who he decided to mentally call Bob, if only because he lacked anything better to call the fool, and calling him a leader of any sort was an insult to leaders around the world. Yes, he thought, slightly smug, Bob was a good name for the other. Had the man ever bothered introducing himself before showing off his stupidity? He thought back for a moment. Not that he remembered. He wasn't even really sure why the fool was trying to pick on him in the first place. Were they still in high school or something mentally? 

More like elementary school, he mentally corrected.

Bob was sneering at him, but Liano wasn’t bothered in the least. How could he? Bob was clearly more muscle than brain, not that he had a lot in the first department either. "I'm not afraid of you. It's more of a case if you were on fire, I'd find a glass of water and drink it while sitting on a lawn chair with popcorn until you either remembered what you were taught in kindergarten or died. Whichever came first."

"What?" Bob asked, his mouth hanging slightly open.

That made him roll his eyes. He wasn't even using particularly big words. How sad. "I'd try to explain it to you, but I'm simply lacking the time."  
Bob was clearly trying to rescue his pride, but Liano knew that it was an impossible endeavor. How could one rescue something that had long since drowned? 

"At least I don’t have to rape my girlfriend just to get some!" Bob shot back.

Liano raised a perfectly shaped brow. He really shouldn't have assumed Sophie was his girlfriend, or brought her into this. "I would say your girlfriend has sixty seven protons, but firstly, no one would date you, and second, you wouldn’t understand the insult. I don’t particularly enjoy wasting insults on people who look like someone bred a mosquito and a barracuda, with the brain power of an amoeba. Oh, wait, do you even know what any of those things are?"

"Go kill yourself you freak!" Bob demanded, as if expecting Liano to comply simply because the other wished it. How stupid was this man, he couldn't help but wonder.

"If I wanted to do that," Liano started dryly, "I'd climb up your ego and jump down to your IQ level."

"What?"

"I'll try to use small words so that you don’t kill yourself from thinking too hard." He paused, and brought a hand to his chin. "On second thought… You, ignoramus, are a cacafuego who clearly wishes that someone other than yourself would engage you with your egotistical carnal knowledge, you pathetic, repulsive, condescending cretin."

"What?"

"In tiny words?" He couldn't help himself. The man made it too easy. "Go fuck yourself because no one else wants to."

"What?" The idiot asked for a third time. Liano wondered if Bob even realized that he was proving his point by repeating his limited vocabulary.

He inwardly snorted as a fist came flying towards his face. Well, besides talking like a pretentious proper, high society weirdo, he mentally counted that as a success.

Blows rained down on his body until he was fairly sure that he was going to be a walking bruise soon. He curled up slightly to protect his ribs from a violent kick. Even as he was being hit and kicked, he couldn't stop the small snort that left his lips. This was pathetic, even by his standards. He was ninety percent sure that they assumed the noise was one of pain, but this was the most pitiful beating he had ever experienced. 

"Alright, ya freaks!" He heard someone, probably another guard, yell. "Break it up!" 

By the time he looked up, which took a moment as his head was starting to pound from an unfortunate kick that probably hadn't broken anything, there were five guards both holding back the idiots, as well as keeping everyone away. 

He mentally rolled his eyes. He was fine, thanks for asking, he couldn't help but think sarcastically. L. Thomas strode over, and helped him up, not that he really needed it. He brought a hand up to his eyes, wiping the blood that had trickled into his vision away. 

His eyes widened as he stumbled slightly, using the guard to catch himself. Damn. They must have gotten a better kick on his leg than he had thought. Contrary to popular opinion, the cane? It wasn't optional. Or, at least, it hadn't been for several years. Nowadays, he only needed it on really bad days to move around, but it was easier for people to assume that he always relied on it.

His other hand, the one that wasn't clutching the guards shoulder, moved to rub at his thigh. Great, he thought exasperated. Thankfully, he had a few days before his planned break out. He would probably be mostly immobile for the next two or so days. 

Liano let the expression slide off his face, closing his mind once again as his leg throbbed. He was ashamed to say that he wasn't completely able to close off the pain in his eyes. The rest of his body was more or less alright, but his leg? That was going to randomly give him hell for months. 

He really needed his cane right about now. But as usual with his needs, it simply wasn't possible. Hopefully, he would be able to get rid of the severe limp sooner rather than later. He cautiously let his weight, or at least part of it, move from his good leg to his bad one. His teeth grit as pain raced through his leg. 

A map of the prison appeared in his mind, trying to figure out how far his goal was from him, and how long he could manage before his leg gave out under him. He figured he had maybe five minutes, with the support of someone or something. A scowl broke out on his features. 

This wasn't going to work very well. 

Damn it all. 

He put one foot in front of the other, and quickly shifted his weight off of his bad leg. The limp that steps like this caused was terrible, but he didn't really have a choice in the matter. 

It was funny that his leg was still like this after all these years. He must have been, what, fifteen or so, when he had been jumped and left for dead the last time. His right leg had been broken in four places, three of his ribs had broken, with another fracturing, his left wrist had been broken, and, if he remembered right, a lung had collapsed. 

Poor Sophie had a panic attack the moment she had found out. If he hadn't been found when he was, he would have most likely died soon after. But, thankfully, he had been too stubborn, and not only had he healed, he had been able to walk again, run again, and fight again. Sure, some days his leg was pretty much useless and he had to spend the entire day in bed. But he had healed. That was all that mattered. 

He rotated his left wrist for a moment, before stopping the subconscious motion. No one would recognize it for what it truly was, a burst of phantom pain for a moment. 

After several antagonizing minutes of using the wall to support his weight, he was finally in the infirmary. The moment he sat down, he knew he wouldn't be able to stand for a bit. Thomas refused to look at him the entire time, and he didn't really mind. He never even let Sophie see him on the bad days, and having to rely on someone else was just wrong. 

Thankfully, he had a moment to wipe the sweat and blood off of his face before the door opened again. He wasn't going to show anyone how much he was hurting. He wouldn't take any type of medication, because that would screw up everything. He needed his mind clear and his thoughts racing if this was going to work.

A tall, dark haired man came strolling in, pushing his glasses up his nose with one hand while reading a clipboard in the other. His hair was gelled back, and his blue eyes shined from behind his glasses. He wasn't reading the chart, of course not. Liano recognized the gesture for what it was, having used it several times himself. 

Liano smirked to himself. This was who he had been needing to see.

"Well" the good doctor asked, "What seems to be-" He cut himself off and froze when he saw exactly who was waiting for him.

Liano felt his smirk take a more evil quality to it. "Hello, Dr. Tyler. How has your day been going?" He asked politely. His eyes were closed off, giving him a slightly psychotic look to his face. As far as anyone else would know, it was on purpose. He knew better. It only happened when he was trying to hide his pain. 

The other man seemed to shake himself out of his fear. "Better than yours if what I'm reading is true." He replied. "Tell me, what is the Two Brained Altieri doing cuffed to one of my beds and beaten bloody from a fight that I know you could have prevented?"

He tisked slightly. "That would be telling, wouldn’t it. Speaking of, I assume you haven't mentioned our, " he paused for a moment, "previous meeting to anyone?"

The doctor laughed darkly. They both knew he hadn't, and wouldn’t speak of this one either unless he wanted Liano to spill his secret.

After a moment of silence, Liano let the smirk slide off his face. "Good." He praised dryly. "Now, Dr. Tyler, there is something that you are going to do for me. Once you have, you will forget that we ever spoke. Do you understand?"

Dr. Tyler grit his teeth hard enough that Liano was slightly surprised that the man's teeth didn’t shatter under the force of the bite. "Yes." He bit out.  
Liano raised an eyebrow. "Yes what, doctor?" This was done for several reasons. He knew that every bit of this was a powerplay, and the moment he let the other man forget what he had over the doctor was the day Doctor Kai Tyler threw Liano to the wolves.

The other man clenched his fist and Liano could see sweat start to bead on the other man's forehead. Well, well, it appeared that the good doctor already knew this part of the game. Practice, probably, Liano thought lazily.

"Yes sir."

He gave the slightly taller, dark haired man a look of approval. "Good boy." He muttered. Liano may have been covered in bruises that stung and ached as he kept his posture stiff and straight, and he may have blood running down the side of his face, as well as being cuffed to the bed, but there was only one person in the room with any power. And it wasn’t the good doctor.

"What do you need?" Dr. Tyler asked.

Liano gave the man a slightly disturbing smile that probably looked even more creepy with blood running down from both his temple from where the idiots had smashed his head against the table , and his lip where one idiot punched him.

"Well, you see, Dr, it starts like this…"


	6. The Substance

Everything was going according to plan. It was almost suspicious that getting everything in place was as easy as it had been. Liano was expecting some resistance, or at least for someone to betray him, which was probably why no one knew everything. He had Webber on gathering the things he would need post breakout, and the other two carefully dealing with the same issue, just from different angles.

He had always known that his information network was extensive, but he hadn't, for some reason, known exactly how to get each piece to do exactly what he wanted it to.

The human race was full of mistakes, and if anyone had the potential to screw him over, they would. Humans were too difficult to control, he decided with a mental huff.

That didn't change the fact that he had to rely on others for the first time in his life. He knew exactly how delicate this was. All anyone had to do was talk about their part with anyone, and his entire plan would go up in flames.

He had to, dare he think, trust the people around him to not mess up. Or speak about it with each other. They each knew just their parts, and as long as they were mostly unsure of what the others were doing, he would be fine.

Probably.

He hated the margin for human error.

A knock on the bars made him look up and he resisted the urge to smirk at the young guard. He didn't know the guy's name, or who exactly he had pissed off in order to get stuck delivering a message to him.

"You've got a visitor, Mr. Altieri, sir." A guard told him with a slight stutter. The man looked terrified, clearly wanting to be anywhere but here. Liano wasn't sure whether he was insulted that the man thought he would kill him if he so much as raised his voice, or amused that someone with a gun , thought that he, someone hundreds of camera's watching his every move, was clever enough to not only kill the guard, but get away with it.

Then again, if he was Batty Matty, well... The man could probably make anyone disappear, even in the jail.

As it was, Liano had better things to worry about, he thought with a mental roll of his eyes. He stood calmly, and waited for the guard to cuff him. It was, honestly, a useless precaution, seeing as slipping out of handcuffs was one of the first things he learned, besides lock picking, pick pocketing, and figuring how to get out of ropes.

This would be too easy, he knew, should he actually want to get out of here just yet. But no, he needed to be patient. His leg was still screwed up, and his body still ached. He needed a little bit more time to get everything in place before he could actually go through with this. 

The walk to the conference room was a long one, and Liano amused himself by randomly staring at the guard. For some reason, the man either sped up and practically dragged him along, or broke out in shivers. If he was slightly less dignified, he would have been on the floor laughing.

If his sweet Sophie had been there, he would have been scolded for frightening the poor man, even though he clearly was not actually doing anything. If the guard wanted to actually succeed in this field, he would need to toughen up, and not just a little bit either. The other man somehow needed to grow a spine.

How disappointed the man's mother must have been, giving birth to something that was more cowardly rat than strong man.

Of course, Liano of all people saw the value of other types of strength, a strong mind was just as, if not more, dangerous than a strong body. That said, the man was not worth existing if he went through life like this.

Some days, like today apparently, he wished it was possible for someone to get rid of all of those that were holding humanity back. He understood, technically, that it was cruel for him to think that, but he couldn't help but wonder how much further human-kind would be if only the strong existed.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, and felt his eyes widening ever so slightly. Well, he thought feeling a shiver of excitement crawl up his spine, that was quick.

A man was sitting with his hands buried in his light brown hair. He clearly wanted to be anywhere else, but neither of them seemed to actually have a choice in the matter. The man wasn't a stranger, of course. Liano knew him well enough, even though they had only seen each other a few times. Once the door closed, the man looked up at him with startled blue eyes.

He nodded coolly to the man, not at all surprised by the very real agony in his eyes. His blue eyes were red rimmed, and he seemed to be seconds away from tears. His hair was in worse shape than Liano's, and fell greasily down the man's head.

For once, he didn't doubt the man. It was strange, almost disturbing at how he felt so sorry for the other man. He could tell how much the other was hurting, and for some reason, Liano hated that.

He wasn't sure why, but the sight of the younger man made the protective side of him emerge from the shadows of his soul. Something clicked behind his eyes. The only reason he cared if this human survived or not was because Sophie cared about him, and Liano could clearly see how much he loved her as well.

Something loosened in his chest. Sophie had love in her life. Even if it wasn't traditional, she knew that she had both of these men, for different reasons. Liano's love for her was strictly that of a daughter or sister. The other man was the love of her life, and she was apparently his as well.

Their eyes met, and Liano let himself nod slightly. He knew the other man understood what he couldn't say.

"Trevor Sloan, you have one half an hour before the prisoner needs to be moved back to his cell. Tomorrow is a big day for him, after all." The other guard told him as both moved to the other side of the room. They weren't really alone, and couldn't talk freely, but he admitted, if only to himself, that he was curious as to what the other man would say.

After a moment of silence, Liano figured the man needed a bit of help getting started. "Sloan is it? For some reason, dearest Sophia always said your last name was Slug. I can see why the mistake was made, of course, as I can easily see the resemblance between you and your salt hating relatives." He sneered.

Liano saw the rage in the other man's face, before something more detached took over.

"At least slugs have brains, miss Emi. Oh, I'm sorry, are you a man or a woman? I know I'm not the only one wondering. I asked her a few times, and she told me she didn't know." Trevor Sloan spat back.

Liano resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Honestly, what was the reason that everyone thought that insinuating that he was a girl would be insulting? Sure, at one time, it was, but Liano was someone who, normally took pride in his appearance. As long as he knew he could get any kind of attention, he was content. Besides, he had to admit, he would make a very hot woman. 

"At least I care how I look. You look like someone ran you over on your way here. Or maybe they thought you were a rabid dog and tried to put you down." Liano scoffed. The other man would have to do better than that if he wanted to actually effect Liano in anyway.

Sloan scowled at him. "Oh please, I just lost the love of my life. What's your excuse?"

"Prison." Liano shot back calmly, staring at his hands and inspecting his fingernails.

"Oh, and that's supposed to make me feel sorry for you? Please, pretty boy, with your looks, I'm sure you're already the prison bitch. For some reason, I doubt you mind."

If he had any less control over his body, he would have flinched slightly. How could the man joke about that when he knew what happened to Sophie? That was taking it a bit far, or so he thought. Thankfully, he didn't react more than bringing a hand up to his ear and rubbing it. "I'm sorry," Liano said calmly, watching the shocked reactions that he would tear apart in a moment with a cold glee. "Was that supposed to be an insult? Well, I suppose you succeeded," He said slowly, bringing his hands up to move his hair out of his face. "If only because your face and breath are equally insulting to me. Have you heard of a paper bag? It would help with both problems." He offered coolly.

The other looked at him with surprise. "You bastard." Sloan said slowly, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You self- obsessed, selfish, stupid brat! Don't you know who I am? Who I was to her? Don't you give a fuck about anyone that isn't yourself? Sophie used to insist that you were human, but somehow, I doubt it. How someone like her could even associate with you, I don't know." The man was breathing heavily by this point, standing, and clenching his fists by his side. Despite that, it didn't appear that the man was done just yet. One hand reached for his pocket, and Liano half wondered if the other man had a gun. He carefully didn't prod any subjects that he knew would actually hurt the other man, but apparently, he had trampled over a sore spot, made worse for the fool that other people were watching humiliation.

It wasn't a gun, he noticed with slightly wide eyes. It was a ruby red box. A ruby red ring box. His mind stuttered to a halt. He knew that Sophie cared for him, and he could easily see the love that Sloan had for his sweet Sophie, but somehow, he hadn't expected this. Sure, normal people fall in love, get married, have a couple of children, a house with a gate, and a dog, but this was Sophie.

She was too young to be married, and the fact that this man clearly loved her enough to stand in front of him with the box in his hands made him raise his opinion slightly. That took guts, and balls of steel, seeing as how he was currently being charged with her murder.

Sloan popped open the box, and Liano knew immediately that she would love it. Would have loved it, he corrected, ignoring the sorrow that stabbed his heart to staring at the beautiful white gold ring with two small emeralds surrounding a set of sapphires. In the middle was a single diamond, around the same size as the other stones. Personally, he would have thought it was too busy, but that was Sophie.

She was always doing fifty things at once, and the ring would have been cherished more than anyone would have ever loved a ring before. Sophie was strange like that. She would take the little tokens that he gave her, before he had actually gotten his hands on money, and gush like he had just given her the crown jewels, not a small bobble head that he had painted her face on.

Sloan took the ring in his hands, before throwing the box at his head. Liano caught it, and looked down at the blood red box. "Keep it, you ass. If nothing else, it'll remind you of how much you screwed up her life. She should have died happy, old, and surrounded by family, but you took that away from her. All you did from the moment you met her was take things away from her. Well congratulations, you took everything from both of us." He shook his head roughly, and ran a hand through his hair. "I guess you finally got everything that she could give."

The guards came over to him, and locked him back in the cuffs. Neither man seemed like they were in the mood to talk, which he understood, seeing as he wasn't really in the mental state that would prove clever at the moment.

Sloan was escorted out by one guard, an older, slightly chubby man who was losing his hair, while Liano went with the younger man. He half expected the guard to take the box from him, but he didn't even look at it.

It seemed that the man thought he deserved the reminder.

If he had actually killed her, it would have been amusing watching the man try to get a reaction from him. If he had seen the light go out of her eyes, he would have had closure, of a sort, and known that her blood was solely on his hands.

But, he didn't.

He wouldn't have killed her, even if it would have been so easy to crush her throat. Maybe that was why he was being so hard on himself. He knew that he could have taken her life. He dreamed of blood and gore more nights than he didn't. He knew why, of course, it was his revenge on the world. He had to be careful, cautious, and cold.

He knew that he wouldn't regret taking a life, and, for most of his life, he had been alright with that. He had come to accept that as a fact of his existence.

But, while other had quickly become terrified of him as a child, Sophie was different. She knew what he was. She knew that he could kill her without regret or thought. But she had never been scared of him.

He may never have sat down and had a conversation about his blood lust, but she had known, and never looked at him like the monster he knew he was. At first, he hadn't understood how someone like her could stand to be around him. He was dark. She was light. He was ice. She was fire. He lived and moved in the shadows. She was never more content than in the sunlight. He was the villain to someone's story. She would have been the heroin.

After a while, he had finally understood. She was as drawn to his darkness as he was to her light. He would do anything to protect her. She would do anything to redeem him.

When he was back in his cell, he was released once more, and left sitting on the so called bed, staring at the little box in his hands. After making sure he was alone, he turned so that he was facing the corner, and made sure that the camera's couldn't see what was in his hands.

He popped it open, and pulled out the small cushion, before his shoulders started shaking. If he had been anyone else, people would have assumed that he was simply quieting his sobs.

But, he wasn't. He was Emiliano Dante Altieri.

No, he wasn't crying.

He was laughing.

Everything was going perfectly. No, it was going better than perfect. This was exactly what he needed to finally get out of here. Inside the box was a small vial, and a small strip of paper.

Only three words were written in angry, rushed handwriting.

Make Them Pay.

This was Trevor Sloan's final wish, and Liano had every intention of granting it. He swore to Sloan, Sophie, and himself that he would somehow, someway, destroy the lives of the people who had destroyed his.


	7. The Boom

Everything felt heavy. His head was pounding, and the little bit of harsh light that seemed to make it through his closed eyelids was enough to make him wish he was blind. He made a mental note to never do that again. Sure, it shouldn't have done much more than knock him out and, if the idiot, Tyler, hadn't screwed up too much, then he should be pretty much free.

He tried to raise his hand to his eyes, but was stopped by a clinking sound. It seemed that no one was stupid enough to trust him to stay asleep, which was, irritatingly, probably a good idea. Too bad for them, he was too good for them.

Liano shifted slightly, and sure enough, right under where his arm rested, was a small key. Perfect. He could have broken out, or simply picked the lock on the cuffs, but he had made a totally different decision. He had made this as easy on himself as possible. He shifted slightly, grimacing when the key stuck to his skin, and maneuvered his arm until his hand could pull the key from his skin. It took only a moment before he was free.

Calmly, and with as much grace as he could force his sluggish body to have, he sat up, swung his legs off of the bed, and stood. His legs felt like jello, which was enough to tell him that he had been asleep for at least a day. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be many side effects. His head hurt, his body felt like lead, and he was fairly certain that his vision wasn't supposed to blur like that, but overall, he was fine. He carefully pulled out the iv, and glanced around the room.

There was a small closet in the corner that he was fairly certain held his clothes, and a small door leading to the bathroom.

He whistled lowly. This was much better than he expected. It seemed that Kai Tyler was smart enough to realize that if he failed his task, he would be thrown in jail with the other perverted assholes.

For a moment, he considered telling Thomas about the good doctor's habit anyways, but decided against it for now. After it was known that he was up and killed, he would send a message to the man telling him to take a good look at the other man.

If it wasn't for the fact that he needed to actually get out of the prison in the first place, he wouldn't have ever even spoken to the man.

Liano wasn't stupid, he realized that he had to protect the doctor for a while. It made him feel slightly sick, but he would put up with it, until he had avenged Sophie. After that, well, the man was fair game.

He slowly walked over to the closet and saw his suit calmly resting inside with the plastic over it telling him that it had been fresh from the cleaners. He glanced over to the bathroom, and resisted the urge to sigh. He wanted a long, hot shower, but he only had a limited amount of time before someone came in, and couldn't trust that only the doctor would be the one tending to him. After all, the man couldn't be too obvious. If anyone knew that he was being blackmailed, it was over for both of them.

With a small sigh, he grabbed the hanger and took it to the bathroom. He hung it on the back of the door, and leaned over to wash his face. Once that was done, he stripped off the horrid hospital gown and changed into his suit, sighing quietly again. This time though, was because of pleasure.

He straightened his hair as much as he could, and pulled a small ribbon out of his pocket. It was a dark purple one that had been a gag gift from Sophie that he never wore. He had only kept it because he felt sick at the thought of throwing something from her away. Now, though, he both regretted it and was glad for it.

He rolled his eyes in the mirror, before tying his hair back. He stared at his appearance, not as perfect as usual, but he would make due.

With that, he left the bathroom, and the hospital room, pulling his cane from where it had been resting against the wall. He hid a smirk. Sure, he had to release the pervert from his debt, and had to cash in more favors than he had ever imagined he would, but, he thought with a small laugh, even prison couldn't hold him.

It took a few minutes to navigate the halls, but, as promised, everything was clear.

It spoke of the doctors talent that the man knew when he would have woken up. Just as he was at the glass doors on the ground floor, he heard the emergency alarm go off. He smirked, pushed the door open, and waited until the dark blue S.U.V. drove around.

A woman was driving, he noticed, and she sent him a beaming smile as he walked calmly over to the car. She unlocked the door, and he opened it, got in, and turned to his escape driver. "I take it you are miss Parker?" Liano asked with every bit of charm he could muster.

She was a beautiful woman, with long, silvery blonde hair that was curled perfectly, and expressive green eyes. She was dressed casually, in a black shirt with dark blue jeans, and a black hair tie around her wrist.

"I am. It's nice to maple acquaintance." She giggled.

He couldn't resist the urge to freeze, mid putting his seat belt on, and looked at her. Had he misheard her? Probably, he admitted to himself. His brain was still not working correctly. He was still foggy from the drugs, and sore from the beating, well one sided fight that he so mercifully decided not to participate in.

"Yours as well. I thank you for your quick response." He finished buckling up, only pausing to bow his head slightly in her direction.

Her eyes froze over, and she stared at him, unblinking for a few moments. "Did you kill that woman? Everyone says you did, bark, the boss says otherwise."

His own eyes looked away, and he turned slightly to stare at the hospital through the glass of the window. "I might as well have, Miss Parker. I'm not a nice man, you understand how things in our world work."

He closed his eyes and leaned against the seat, maybe he would wake up to find that this was nothing but a bad dream. Parker stayed quiet, but started the car. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he couldn't say anything else on the subject, not while he felt so awful, and wanted nothing more than to call Sophie to bring him something.

Not that he could. She was gone, but in moments like this, he could pretend, if only for a moment, that she was well, and just pissed at him for pushing her away.

Liano felt his eyebrow twitch. Why had he thought it was a good idea to listen to Matty again? Right, because if he didn't, he would either still be stuck in the prison or dead. No one went against Batty Matty unless they wanted to die a horrible, painful death.

He really should have realized that anyone Batty Matty liked was probably less than sane. However, he doubted that even in his strangest dreams he would be able to come up with someone like Parker.

The woman was beautiful, silvery blonde hair that cascaded down her back in a waterfall of curls, and brilliant green eyes that could take anyone's breath away. The problem was not with her looks. Oh no, it was when she spoke that made him want to strangle her.

She had just spent the last hour debating with herself if Maple she wanted to Bay Leaf him or not. Finally, she decided against it because Matty would be upset with her. Then, she would be Leaf alone.

How this woman actually spoke like that, he wasn't sure. At first, he thought that maybe she was putting on a show for him, and that she was just testing him to see how long until he snapped. After about an hour of her laughing at her own, as she called them, Park Puns, he realized with dread that this was actually how she spoke.

"You should be more careful, otherwise your anger will start to blossom." She warned him.

He felt like banging his head against the dashboard , or strangling her. "I'm perfectly calm." He grit his teeth and tried to remember that there had to be a reason that Batty Matty paired them together. Matty wanted them to succeed, and Liano knew that he wouldn't just pair him with someone just to drive him off the edge of sanity.

He hoped.

"What unique skill set do you possess that made Matty think that we would be a good pair?" He asked, trying to distract himself from the thoughts of ripping out her tongue and using her body as compost. If she wanted to make those awful puns, then he might as well make her part of the park.

She giggled.

She actually giggled at him. No one did that. Ever. Was she so calm in his presence that even his silent threats didn't register? Or was she so insane that she couldn't see anyone as a threat to her.

"Why don't we leaf that alone until later? I'm sure that you don't want me to know everything about you. Maple. Ivy- less, of course, you are wondering if you can trust me. Don't be such a gr- oak." She told him, switching lanes to go around the slower car that had been in front of them.

He wondered if Batty Matty would be too upset if he just shot the woman. Five park puns, in less than a minute. How was that actually a thing?

Then again, she was the one that Batty Matty trusted to help him. That said more than anything else. If she was his favorite, then that meant there was a very little chance that she would actually stop the stupidity any time soon.

He wondered, for a moment, which of them actually drove the other insane. One made horrible park puns and seemed obsessed with plants. The other insisted on people calling him Batty Matty. He was mostly sure that they delved into the world of the insane around the same time.

Because Matty had been so closed lipped about the woman, Liano was ninety percent sure that she did something as insane as she was. Demolitions maybe? Arson?

He shuddered. That was probably the scariest thought he ever had. Parker. With explosives.

If that was the case, the world was dead, it just didn't know it yet.

"Well, Mr. Al- Tree- Ri, I'll take good care of you!" Parker told him cheerfully.

That, he mentally shuddered once more, was exactly what he was afraid of.

She turned to him, and smiled. "What, don't you Bay Leaf me? Olive you people are the same. You should be re- leafed that I'm with you." She huffed and gripped the steering wheel harder. "Trees."

An hour or so later, Liano felt a bit of dread start to climb his stomach. She was being quiet. He wasn't sure why, but he had a horrible feeling that her being silent for any period of time was a really, really bad thing.

"Are we pear yet?" Parker asked suddenly, drumming her fingers over the steering wheel.

Liano resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Not yet."

"Are we pear yet?" She asked again.

"No, Ms. Parker." He answered, trying to keep his fragile grip on his temper.

She was quiet for a few minutes, and he started to relax into the silence of the car ride. Of course, Parker being Parker meant that wouldn't last for very long.

"Are we pear yet?" She whined.

This time, he turned his head to glance out the window, and allowed himself to roll his eyes. How was she still alive, he couldn't help but wonder. He had only known her for a few hours, and his fingers already twitched for the trigger of something that would shut her up, preferably forever.

"No."

She grinned evilly, and he wanted to smack himself. Honestly, he should have known better than to react. Reactions just seemed to encourage her to be as annoying as possible.

"Hey, Al- Tree- Ri?"

He grit his teeth to bite back his irritation. Were all people like this? "Yes Ms. Parker?"

"I'm just Parker." She told him flippantly.

"Very well, Parker." He agreed. Maple she would be less annoying if he simply gave in. Eugh. Really brain? Really? He needed to get out of here if he wanted to leave this car with his sanity intact. Or en- tree- erly there.

Holy hell! It was contagious!

He turned to her, astounded. "How did you…"

She smirked at him. "Easily, Mr. Al- tree- ri. You know, sometimes, being subtle is more effective than rushing in. Now, where are you fern?"

He wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. That meant that, hopefully, she didn't actually say things like this very often. Probably. Maybe.

Who knew. She wasn't sane enough to actually read. Or maybe she was too sane? Maybe she knew that she was confusing him, and was just doing this to fuck with him. He didn't want to admit it, but it was working.

"I would rather not say." He said slowly. The less she knew about him, the less she would be able to fuck with him. With some luck, anyways.

She gave him a slightly smug look that left him feeling like he had either lost something, or missed something entirely. "I tree."

Something was off about her, more so than he had originally thought. He had gained some interesting insight about her thanks to her earlier debate. Even if it wasn't much, it told him that she was used to being alone, and used those stupid puns as a shield from the real world. She probably thought that if everyone thought she was dumb, they would leave her alone. It was an interesting plan, assuming he actually got any of it right, but it wasn't going to be effective long term. The only way to shut yourself off from the world wasn't to push everyone away, but to cut off ones emotions. Anyone who did this was pretty much alone anyways, without having to keep up a constant shield like she did.

His way was far less draining, and worked better.

And while he certainly pissed off plenty of people, he most likely didn't have nearly as many people after his head.

"Are we pear yet? I mean, olive- ly, who would have thought that the root was so long."

That did it.

He leaned forward and let his head fall heavily against the dash. If he wasn't so sure that Batty Matty would kill him, he would kill her.

… then again, he was ninety percent sure that someone this crazy was able to protect herself, and there had to be a reason that Batty Matty thought that she was a good person to help him.

That said, he still wished he could splatter the windshield with her brain and bone, but that would be too much of a hassle. Who knew what would happen to him if he actually succeeded in taking her life?

Hopefully, everything would be fine, but he doubted it.

"Are you not the one who knows where we are going? You are the driver, after all. You are the one that Matty tasked with getting me to the safe house and to the supplies!" He wasn't shouting. No, he was too good for that. His voice may have been slightly raised, and maybe he felt a flare of his temper, but that didn't mean he was yelling. Did it?

He hadn't actually yelled in a long time. He preferred to lower his voice to a whisper when he was truly angry, catching whoever had made him angry off guard. Apparently, he was quite scary with he went into his, as Sophie called it, Vengeful God Mode.

She hummed quietly. "Maple, but boss never said how boring you were! Olive- ly, you are probably the most boring person on the plant- it. Besides, how can you say anything bad about Parker Puns? They're pure bean- ius!"

"That's not a word." He corrected with another mental roll of his eyes. This, he couldn't help but sigh to himself, was going to be a long trip.

He glanced around the dark blue S.U.V., and something clicked in his mind. "Did you collect the items that I requested?" He asked coolly, if only because he would go insane if he kept up the current conversation.

"Of course." She told him. For the first time since he had gotten in the car with her, he heard professionalism in her voice. It was a nice change, he thought with a small, inward smirk.

He glanced behind him and sure enough, there was the medium sized black shoulder bag. It, like most of his things, was not what it appeared to be. Innocent looking though it may be, it had more than a few tricks hidden inside. He had gotten the bag several years ago, and had a bad habit of creating tricks and things to help him get out of a few sticky situations. Funny enough, it wasn't just his bag. Oh no, there was a reason he walked with a cane, even if he didn't need one. And, despite what Sophie may have thought, it wasn't just because it made him look more elegant. After all, you can't improve perfection. But, that doesn't mean you can't try.

He leaned against the back of the seat, feeling the seat belt relax slightly against his chest. He loved it when things went his way. Everything ought to go his way more often, he thought with a hidden smirk. The world would be so much better than it was.

Sure, Sophie would have called him either egotistical or narcissistic, but he preferred to think of himself as right. After all, if it wasn't paranoia when someone was actually out to get you, then it couldn't be narcissism if he was actually that amazing. Right?

And he was. He had managed to get all of his pieces to react correctly thus far. He could have just jinxed himself, but as he always had told his Sophie, one could not put a jinx on his greatness.

Of course she always just scoffed and told him that it was more like no one could put his ego in a box. If it had been anyone else, they would have been bleeding out on the side of the road by now, but it had long since become a joke between the two of them.

Something caught his eye in the side mirror. A dark grey car, he couldn't tell the type from here, was behind him. He racked his memory, and tried to think. His eyes widened slightly.

That car had been the same one that had been right outside the hospital. There had been a man talking on his phone inside, the same man was still on the phone inside, but there were a few extra people. Two more, to be exact. Somehow, the car had managed to gain a few extra passenger's without losing the blue car.

"Can you change lanes for a moment?" Liano asked casually, taking note of how Parker straightened her spine. She did as he asked, and, less than ten seconds later, so did the other car.

She got over to the right lane, before cutting over and turning left. A few seconds later, the driver of the other car did the same thing.

"Damn it!" Liano cursed. Parker was speeding up, and changing lanes randomly. She had clearly, finally, noticed the same thing he had. It was official then. They had a tail. Great.

She sped up further, annoyed, and started muttering to himself. He turned in his seat, the belt tight around his chest, and reached for his bag. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, but he would be damned if he was going to let them cause him to lose anything.

"Do you have a gun or some 'in here?" He asked, slurring his words slightly. His stupid accent was showing, and he didn't have time to care. He had better things to worry about, especially when two men, one in the back drivers side, and the other in the front passenger's, rolled down the windows.

Liano hoped, for all of two seconds, that he was wrong. Then the shots started.

Machine guns, he thought bitterly. This was going to get messy. The shots seemed to bounce off the dark blue S.U.V., but Liano knew better than to think that bullet proof glass was going to last forever.

He glanced around desperately, clutching the bag's handle in his hand. He really, really didn't want to do this. He took a deep breath and blocked out the screaming from the cars around them and the people on the streets. Most people would keep a gun in the dashboard, but this was Parker. He may not have known the woman, but even he was smart enough to notice that she would keep a gun somewhere a little less obvious.

He paused. Wait. Parker wouldn't choose someplace less obvious. She would choose the most obvious place in the world. He reached under his seat, and sure enough, his fingers closed over cold metal. It was stuck on something, and he carefully maneuvered it from under the seat. He raised his eyebrow slightly.

It was, for some strange reason, a glock 19. If he was to look inside the gun, he was fairly certain that the serial numbers had been filed off, at the very least. Parker handed him something, the ammo, and he quickly loaded the gun with a small click, before opening the window. A bullet whizzed past his face, and he tried not to cringe as it embedded it'self in the rearview mirror just inches from his head. He took a deep breath, and started mentally counting. Once he reached five, he fired. Not at the people, but at the front right tire. Hopefully, if he could pop one of the tires, it would give him enough of an edge that they could get away.

"Who are those guys?" He asked loudly over the sound of the wind whistling in his ears. He fired again, moving carefully to avoid the full shock of recall.

"If I knew that," she snarled back just as loud, although it sounded like a whisper, "Then they wouldn't be any- pear near us!"

A third shot, and finally, a tire blew. He mentally patted himself on the back. Considering how fast they were going, he had mostly doubted that he would actually hit anything. The buildings were more of a blur than anything, and the people weren't any better. He wasn't sure if that was just because of how fast they were going, or if it was more of him blocking out everything else in hopes that it would raise his concentration.

"I got it." He told her, ducking back in the car and resting the gun on his lap. His voice was cold, and mostly detached as he rolled up the window. As far as he was concerned, the chase was over.

"Oh fuck it!" Parker growled out, seeing something that he clearly didn't. On one hand, a car was pulling itself out in front of them. It clearly was there to make sure they stopped. Behind him, sirens rang in his ears. "I won't let them cactus." She told him, focusing her sharp green eyes on the road. "Olive."

The last word was quiet, and he almost missed it. Olive. What was that supposed to mean? His mind immediately translated it to alive, but surely he was mistaken. It must have meant something else. She wasn't insane enough to kill them both just to keep others from getting them. Right?

Then again, she was the one who was driving well over a hundred miles an hour and in a race with, a quick look over his shoulder, three cop cars. At least. The car was getting closer, and he kept his eyes open, but braced himself for impact.

To his surprise, she managed to get by the other car, before turning onto a back road. There was more traffic here, but, as she slowed down, it would be easier to blend in. She suddenly decided that following traffic laws probably wasn't a bad idea, and even turned her blinker on before turning. If it wasn't for the car that had tried to trap them, he was fairly sure that there would be cops behind them. Thankfully, it seemed like they had lost each other.

Liano breathed a small sigh of relief as the car came to a stop in front of a subway station. He raised an eyebrow, and she grinned brightly, before unlocking the door.

"That was fun!" Parker piped up with pep.

He turned away from her and rolled his eyes. That, more than anything, told him her level of sanity. It was probably around a negative 16. In comparison, he was probably at a two, instead of his usual four. He had lost two sanity points for both coming up with this, and listening to someone who called themselves Batty Matty.

It was probably all his fault that they were in this situation in the first place, he decided, taking half a sanity point for that.

"Who were they?" he asked again. "Have you seen them before?"

Her eyes darkened. "N- oak. But, considering that they have been swollow-ing us for at least a mile before I noticed them, I'd say that that it probably wasn't Tree they were after."

He tried not to roll his eyes, settling instead on a small, private smirk. He wasn't sure if she realized that she had actually said that, and that, some people would guess that she meant the bird, that wasn't what most people would hear.

He looked around with careful eyes. There was no telling how they had followed her in the first place, but he wasn't really willing to believe that they were completely safe yet. He noticed twelve people, seven males, five females. Three of the guys were big, muscled guys that were clearly trying not to look at them. One woman was pushing a baby stroller that was covered with a light blue blanket. Another two were talking while drinking coffee. Another woman was talking animatedly to someone on her cell phone. The last woman was with two guys, sitting on the bench in the bus stop. One guy was reading a newspaper, while his companions were trying not to make eye contact.

Liano blinked. He wasn't sure what, but there was something wrong with this scene.

"Drive." He whispered to Parker without moving his lips.

She turned to him and tilted her head slightly. "Why?"

"Don't you see?" He asked, annoyed. Maybe it was paranoia, but whatever it was, it was yelling at him to get out of there before he no longer could.

Parker narrowed her eyes and looked, watching the same thing that he was, without seeing. She turned to him, and turned off the car. The woman with the baby seemed to be carefully walking, and slowed down while passing them. Liano cursed when he saw the woman's lips curl up in a smirk.

He pulled Parker to him, over the middle of the console, and grabbed his bag and cane in his other hand, before opening the door, and running.

Parker followed, confused, until he heard a boom.

"Oh hell no she didn't!" Parker cursed, starting to run as she reached in her pocket. She pulled out something as they were descending down into the subway. He heard another, louder boom, giving her a weird look. They didn't slow down though, until they had reached the tunnel's edge.

She jumped down on the rails, ignoring his looks and the yells of the people around her, before pulling herself up on the other side. She looked at him over her shoulder, and he cursed again, this time in German, before following her. He could hear the sound of the subway coming towards him as he stumbled across the tracks, not nearly as gracefully as Parker. He threw the bag over the top, as well as his cane, before pulling himself up. He grabbed his cane and bag, before following Parker into the darkness. He heard, more than saw, her smirk.

"That, Mr. Tree, is what I do." Another explosion rocked the subway, and amidst the screams of the people, two people disappeared further into the abyss.


	8. The Rat

He woke with laughter bubbling out of his throat. His hands were stained in blood, and he could practically taste it. He tried to push it down when he realized what he was doing, but he failed. Cackles, low and dangerous poured out of his mouth. In the darkness of the room, there was no light, but that was alright. 

The darkness in his soul, the side that he worked so hard to suppress had finally broke free. The door to the room opened, but he was too busy trying to shove the monster in his brain down far enough that it wouldn’t be able to effect his decision making anymore. 

It took several seconds before he had realized that it was a dream. A good, bloody dream, but a dream none the less. He remembered the sound of bone cracking beneath his cane. It had been messy, but fun work. It had soothed a part of him that he had almost forgotten existed. 

"Mr. Altieri?" MacAllister questioned lightly one he had stopped laughing. "Is everything alright?"

He straightened his shoulders, even if she couldn't see, and did what he did best. "Everything is fine, my dear. Just an interesting memory." He told her, swallowing down the last of his chuckles. Every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the body and the blood. It had been one of his favorite memories. His first kill. 

That was how he knew that if he killed again, he would need to be put down. That was the reason he had no problem if people wanted to think of him as a murderer. He was one. Sophie had barely pulled him out after he had snapped the first time and killed the woman. He remembered the look on her face as she had woken up, naked, in a room covered in plastic. She couldn't see, and he had stayed silent, listening to her pleading and drinking in her screams. Right before she died, after she had bitten through her own tongue several time, he had pulled off the blindfold, letting her see exactly who had dared do this to her. 

It was such a sweet moment, watching her eyes fill with horror as soon as she realized not only who he was, but why he was doing this. All without ever saying a word. The last thing she saw was him cutting off her breasts. It was messy work, but oh so satisfying. 

His first kill was almost enough to send him over the edge, but, then, his phone had rung. Sophie was calling him. Sophie wouldn’t be able to put up with a monster. Sophie, sweet, innocent Sophie, would never know what he had done. He had cleaned up, disposed of the body in pieces, and returned to life as normal. Seeing as how they had been broken up for a month, no one even thought to question him about the death, or disappearance as the rest of the world thought, of Mara Franklin. 

Oh yes, he had killed before. And he missed it.

He had managed to keep it a secret, but he had changed after that night. He was more jaded, more bitter, and unless he was careful, there was something about him that disturbed others around him. It had taken him a week to rebuild his mask, and regain his acquaintances. However, while they had still seemed to like him, no one had forgotten. By the end of the month, he was watched more closely than ever before, and avoided on the streets like never before. 

The few people who challenged him after had not sated his blood lust. He had refused to kill again, for Sophie's sake, but they had still learned a very important lesson. Never mess with Emiliano Altieri. He may not have been known for murder, but that didn’t mean that the people who pissed him off left without a mark.

Oh no, each of them, to this day, still owed him a debt that had remained unspoken, but not forgotten. They had known that if he had actually wanted to, he would have taken their miserable lives. From there, he started gathering information on a larger scale. Information meant the difference between getting away and getting caught. The more people who owed you, the larger your web will become.

Information had stumped him at first. Writing it down was a big no, he dreaded to think about what certain people would do if they knew some of the secrets he kept. His memory was good, but not good enough to process all of his information. Plus, if he died because of the information, the person who killed him would likely get away. 

So, he had decided to do something a little more traditional. He had eight safety deposit boxes that he visited for fifteen minutes each every other week, and twelve mail boxes, both local and a little out of the way. Every week, he sent the information to himself in another box, and every week, he changed the order he visited. The interesting part was that only one safety deposit box actually had something in it, and while all of his mail boxes were used, most only sent dummy information that no one but him would be able to recognize. 

If you can't protect something directly, protect it indirectly. He was rather good at hiding amongst the obvious, if he did say so himself. 

Finally, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to speak anymore, the others left him to his thoughts. The moment the door closed, he leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes. 

He would need the help of his inner darkness. Later. For now, though, he needed his cold, detached mind, not his slightly less sane, bloodthirsty side. He knew that eventually, he would succumb to the crueler, less calculating personality. He had known since his first kill. 

But not yet. 

Not yet.

A few hours later, he was alone, and away. Sure, Hardy was supposed to keep an eye on him, but as the other man told him, he was a big boy. He could handle being alone for a while. Hardy had given him directions for how to get out of the tunnels and back to society.

He knew, at that point, that MacAllister, Parker, and Hardy would be better suited for finding Sophie's killers. They had experience hunting down murderers, and sources that would be able to help in a way that Liano's web couldn't. 

The difference wasn’t exactly experience, but something far more simple. They worked for Batty Matty, and no one wanted to piss him off, or piss off the people that worked for him. Batty Matty's associates were known to be just as insane as he was. 

Personally, he had always thought that they exaggerated that, but after meeting Parker….

He was more inclined to accept the rumors as truth. The woman was less sane than he was, and he doubted that the other two were any better.

Once he was finally out of the dark tunnels, he carefully reemerged from the shadows, blending in easily with the people around him. He had one thing on his mind. A rat that owed him a debt. Liano intended to cash in. 

The rat, or Don Ridley, was called so because of who the man was. He had been raised as the governors son, but had gotten in with the wrong people. Now, at almost forty, the man had lost more than his good looks and most of his hair. Oh no, the man had one horrible habit. He watched and recorded porn, just without the people knowing he was there. The rat had a habit of bugging everyone he saw who had the slightest chance of getting laid. 

Although it was illegal, Liano had left the man free, if only because the rat had managed to get plenty of information, and other things, from his little bugs. At one time, the man had been lauded as a genius.

Too bad for the man, if he could be called that. He had fallen deep into the world of sex and drugs. Now, the man was regretting his life choices, but unable to actually do anything to stop. 

Now, Liano wouldn’t have even known if the man hadn't tried to bug him. See, one of the problems that people who gather information run into often is that they know too much. Some of them even forget that the people they're talking to don’t know that they know certain things. 

The rat had screwed up. He had casually referenced Sophie and her cooking skills. The night after their first meeting, Liano had invited Sophie over, and the two cooked together, as they sometimes did, before spending a few hours curled up on his crappy couch together. 

When the man had referenced one of the shows that he had watched from that night, he hadn't thought much of it, until the next question came up. Why hadn't her boyfriend come to beat him up yet? Sophie had often joked about it, and it seemed that the rat had picked up on it.

A few seconds later, Liano had a knife to the man's neck and had to wait less than a minute for him to explain about his little habit. Instead of killing the man, he had gotten him to swear to pass him any interesting tidbits. If he gave less than ten a month, Liano had promised that the cops would be informed of the rats behavior. 

As long as the man was useful, Liano was willing to let him live. Once that had worn off though… Well, the police coming would be the nicest of all the possibilities. Especially since some of the people that he had watched were more than just low lives. 

And Ridley knew it too. 

This, however, was likely to be their last meeting. Liano hid a grin. He would make this as… memorable as possible. He had a plan for the man, and only one of them would enjoy his trap. And it certainly wasn’t going to be Ridley. 

Poor fool wouldn’t know what hit him. 

Liano went to the location that he knew the rat was hiding away in. It was pitiful that the man still thought he could go somewhere that Liano wouldn’t find. Granted, Ridley was more likely to gather large amounts of information using several different sources at once, but Liano made it his business to know where all of his assets were at all times. Paranoia, and all of that. 

It took him less than an hour to find, and sedate the rat. The fool was too trusting of his technology. Liano glanced down at the idiot and rolled his eyes. Honestly, the idiot hadn't even thought to hire protection. It hadn't even taken a few minutes to poison the idiot without being noticed. The rat had been so focused on the screen in front of him.

Liano ignored the people on the screen that probably didn’t know that they were being recorded in the first place. All he cared about was the balding, semi- large man sleeping at his feet. With a sigh, he managed to drag the man to a nearby room. Liano had already prepared this room, it was one of his hideouts after all. 

He snorted lightly. The man needed a serious lesson in a thing called privacy. Just because everyone thought he was either in jail, or in a coma, at this point he wasn’t really sure which, didn’t mean the man had his permission to be anywhere near the old hole in the walls that Liano used when he was in the area. 

This particular hang out was one of the few that he had prepared rooms for special guests like the man in front of him. It may not have been much, but it did have a few benefits that the man had clearly not bothered to alter. 

Pity for him then. This was a playroom for a sadist. The entire room was covered in plastic, and there were trays full of different tools, as well as a few substances, both deadly and non fatal. The room its self wasn’t very big, and didn’t have a normal way to restrain his chosen victims, but it did have rope. Lots and lots of rope. 

He considered making the man stand on his toes for hours with the threat of strangulation as soon as he relaxed even a bit. But, he didn’t have time for something like that. Oh no, today would be neat, tidy, and be about causing fear. Then, once he got what he needed… well, that was when the fun started.

He could just shoot the man, that was probably the quickest, and least messy, but he'd decide once it was time to put the rat down. 

He wrapped the man tightly in rope, tying him like one would a hog that they were about to slaughter, before cuffing him behind his back. 

Stepping back, he considered the sight in front of him. It wouldn’t hold someone like himself, but the man was too cocky, thinking that he would never get caught, and that no one would dare hurt him.

Too bad for him that his power died as soon as his father had a heart attack almost five years ago. 

Liano finished tying the blindfold around the man's eyes with a flourish. It wouldn’t remain there for very long, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t necessary. Most people opened their eyes when they woke up, and, if he was right, the man wouldn’t recognize the pressure over his eyes. He didn’t really care about the man knowing who he was, oh no, it wouldn’t have worked like that. No, he just wanted the man to be scared, if only for a moment. 

The sudden relief of knowing his captor would be replaced with dread as soon as he realized that Liano had found him in his hideout. He would admit it. He was more than slightly annoyed with that. Just for that, he considered telling everyone what he had done, and leave him with his own cameras to watch others brutally take his life. But, there would be time for that later. 

Right now, he needed to get into the proper mindset to question the freak of nature. The man groaned, and, as Liano predicted, tried to lift a hand to his head. He knew that it was probably a killer headache. He smirked to himself. Poor fool hadn't even realized that he wasn’t alone yet. 

It took less than a minute for the man to whimper and start crying. Liano rolled his eyes. Pathetic rat. 

"Hello, Ridley." He purred, watching the man stiffen up. "It's been a while. I see you found one of my hide outs. Would you care to explain what you are doing here?" His voice was more mocking than soothing. It wasn’t his place to comfort the poor fool, though, seeing as the man wouldn’t be leaving the room alive. 

"B- boss… I-"

"Bugged me, did you? Tisk tisk, Ridley. I thought we had an agreement about that." It may have been sick, but he was enjoying this. He would undo the blind fold in a minute, once the man realized exactly who he had tried to piss off. After all, Liano was known for keeping his promises, and Liano had promised decapitation should the fool try to bug him again. 

The man was shaking, sweat and tears mixing together to soak his blindfold. "I- I…" 

"You what, Ridley? You're sorry? I thought we had an agreement, Rat. What was it I promised I would do to you if I found out you bugged me again?" 

"Y-You promised to t- tear my head off. B- but it isn't my fault! They asked me too! I couldn't say no, boss! They said they'd kill me if I did! I - I didn’t want t, boss, but I kept everything important from them! I promise. I only told them little things, like where you were, not what you were doing or saying. I know who I'm loyal too, boss, and it's not them!" 

"Who's them?" Liano asked calmly. Well, this was slightly more interesting than he expected. If what the man was saying was true, then that meant that someone was interested in him. Huh, he rolled the thought around in his head. He didn’t like that very much. 

"I only know one guys name. Called himself Dietrich." 

That got his attention.  
 


	9. The Corpse

"I require…. information." Liano started, keeping his voice slow and his tone frigid. 

The man in front of him whimpered. It was clear that the man had taken his threat seriously. Good, Liano thought with an evil smirk. It meant that he didn’t have to try half as hard as he normally would have to. Less effort was more than a good thing. The faster he got out of here, the better for both of them. He only had a little bit of time before the trio from hell descended on them. 

"What do you know about an ex- Tod Zerstören Erdhenne named Jarrett Dietrich?" He asked calmly.

If anything, the man paled further. It was too bad for poor Mr. Don Ridley that he had caught the man when he was under so much pressure. Normally, he would wait for the man to give him the information he needed. As it was, time was not on his side this time. He had other things to do, other people to find. It was strange though, to have to be so blunt, but it was a nice change. 

This time, there was no careful maneuvering, no spending weeks following someone, no wasting his time learning useless facts about his quarry. There was no charming people into slowly giving up their secrets. 

Besides, every one would soon know that making him angry was the fastest way to disappear. 

The man, or rat, in front of him was shaking, but spilled anyways. "J. Metzger Dietrich, 37 years old, born in Germany to a traveling gypsy and a normal present. Goes by the nickname Metzger, or the butcher. No wife or children, but he hunted down his parents and killed them. Some say he sold parts of their corpses to the local butcher shops. Known for his butcher knife as his preferred weapon, but has been known to use things like a saw or his fists. Close range fighter. Prefers to overpower his prey and watch the light go out of their eyes. Extremely violent temper. Metzger isn't known to be the type that can be bought. He prefers to fight for a cause. He has a hatred for those in his ex- gang, especially the other Erdhenne that changed instead of staying strong." The man stopped and thought for a second. 

"He has been known to work in groups, but is just as likely to turn on his team as he is their prey. Metzger hates all weakness, and has a special hatred towards those with physical disabilities." The fool whimpered again. "That’s all I know! And I only know that much because the bosses put out a message about the man months ago. He never works this far south, normally, but he was seen around here four or so months ago. Killed a guy who had a messed up arm from a gun shot gone wrong. Cut off the guys arm and stuffed it down his throat until he choked and died. Nasty guy."

Liano considered this for a moment. If he wasn’t the only one hunting the man, it would be more difficult, but if most people had an avoid or die order, as he liked to call them, then if he followed the bodies, he would get there first. Actually, he didn’t even care about getting there first, so long as the man was still breathing and could… answer a few questions.

He nodded, more to himself than Ridley. "Good enough, Mr. Ridley." He told the man. "Thank you for proving your usefulness. Have a nice afterlife." He raised his gun and placed the barrel on the back of the other man's head.

"No! No, no, no, please! Pl- please spare me! Please! I promise, y- you won't regret it!" Ridley sniveled. 

Liano, clearly hidden from the man's view, allowed himself to roll his eyes. Honestly, what a coward. But, he thought with consideration, the man had given up the information without much work on his part. He supposed he could spare the pathetic man's life. "Do you swear on your life that none shall hear of our little meeting?"

If the man didn’t agree, Liano would kill him. He needed as few people as possible to know of his little hunt. The more people that knew, the greater chance that someone would spill his little secret to someone that didn’t need to know. 

"I swear! I’ll kill myself if I so much as think of betraying you! Please, Boss Two- Brained Altieri? Please?" 

Liano huffed lightly. Fine, he mentally sulked, ruin my fun. "You owe me your life." he warned.

"Yes, boss! Anything, boss. But, please…"

"Piss me off again, and it the head on your shoulders will be the second head I rip from your body." He warned. "Do not disappoint me again, Ridley."

Liano moved the gun from the man's head, ignoring the thankful words, before hitting the man harshly in the temple with the butt of the gun. He had promised that he wouldn’t kill the man, but if the fool wasn’t awake, then there was no way that Ridley would be able to tell anyone where he went. 

The other man crumbled forward, and Liano removed to ropes and the cuffs. He hated information specialist, he thought with a sulk of his shoulders. Sure, he was one, but he was aware how annoying he was. Most of his work persona was specially crafted to piss people off. 

He knew that he would never come back, to this place, and that this area was no longer secure, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave empty handed. Oh no, he had a few things to pick up before he left. 

He grabbed a few of the vials that had been resting on the tray by the door, three of each, before closing the door behind himself. He needed to be quick though. He needed to be gone before the man woke up if he wanted to leave the man alive. 

He huffed a sigh. It would be so much easier if he just killed the other man. He had been planning to do so, and he was still mildly annoyed that the man had bugged him. 

Oh well. 

First, he went to the farthest room from the front, the door was blocked off and locked with three different locks. Liano reached into his bag and pulled out a key ring. He wasn’t sure how many keys were on this particular one, but what made this one so clever was the key for the middle lock was the key from the first lock facing upwards, as well as the key from the bottom upside down. It took both keys to unlock the door. He was rather proud of the lock, if only because it would slow down most people long enough to get away if he needed to. 

The room was mostly like he left it, a small air mattress in the corner that was mostly deflated, a small wardrobe that held several different types of clothing, in case he was undercover. 

The only difference in the room was a body in the middle of the room. The corpse was fresh, probably only a week or so old, male, with dark hair slicked back, and pale skin that was more grey than anything now. The man was similar in looks to him, fairly close to his build too, wearing a suit like his.

He huffed again. Well there went that.

It felt like another life when the police came to his office and told him about Sophie's death. They had mentioned that someone who looked similar to him was seen fleeing the scene. He had been playing with the idea of telling Batty Matty's associates about the man, but had ultimately decided to keep it quiet for now.

That said, he had a feeling that he was looking at the man who the witness had seen. 

There was one interesting thing, though. The man's eyes were gorged out. There was no blood on the body, but from the dark bruises on the man's visible neck, as well as the angle of the head, he would guess that someone had come from behind the poor fool to break the man's neck.

Liano was annoyed now. He had been about to look for the man, and had found him, but that also meant that someone, other than the rat, knew where one of his safe houses were.

How irritating.

There was a slight bulge on the man's left pants pocket, probably a wallet, and he debated whether he wanted to touch the corpse or not. Seeing as the corpse was found here, most people, if they were to find out, would blame it on him. Again. 

First, someone had pinned Sophie's death on him, and now this? 

He wasn’t stupid enough to not realize that most of the anger he felt was actually annoyance. If he had actually committed the crime, it would be different, but this man was already dead when he got there. 

Somehow, he doubted that if he called the police, they would believe him when he said that he simply came to his safe house to hunt down someone totally different, ended up leaving them alive, but had nothing to do with this body. 

To be fair, he had planned on killing before he left, but he wouldn’t do it in here. Really, he thought with yet another huff, this was ridiculous. 

He rolled his eyes again, before resigning himself to search the body. If it was found here, as long as a certain someone kept their mouth closed, no one would associate this place with him. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, this place didn’t belong to him, it belonged to Ken Allen, an insurance worker who had a white picket fence with a wife, three children, and a dog. Also known as the perfect cover for him. He had the perfect life, so perfect that if anyone connected this place with the man, they would see that he had several dirty little secrets of his own, such as the fact that he had actually fathered nine children, two of which ended up dying while they were with their father before he had met his current wife. 

If anyone were to actually look, they would actually believe that the man had killed the other. It was easy enough because, as it happened, Ken Allen was the man who buried two of his children under the garden of his perfect house. 

Liano knew that if someone were to find out about the body, and the man who supposedly owned the property, they would find out about the children, like he had. There was nothing in him that wanted to keep the man's perfect life from falling apart. The man deserved to go to jail, but he had been useful in a way, so he had protected the creep from the shadows. The poor man had never even heard of Emiliano Altieri, and never would. 

With thoughts only of his poor nails, Liano carefully wiggled his hand into the pocket of the corpse. Ew. 

After a moment, he was able to close his fingers around the wallet, and pull it out. He opened it, stared at the picture, and cursed loudly. 

Whoever had done this was going to pay, and he wasn’t going to stop until the idiotic waste of sperm and organs was a withering mass at his feet. 

Why? The first thing he saw was the person's drivers license. It was the name, and the fake, but dead blue eyes that caught his attention. Ken Allen. 

He knew that the man had looked like him, from farther away, which was yet another reason he had chosen to use Allen's name. Well, he thought with another sigh, there went the idea of blaming this on the other man. 

Normally, he would have recognized the man, but it had been several years since he needed to look in on the other. Eugh, this was going to be a pain. 

Maybe the police would think that the killer had been someone who discovered the man's sons buried in his garden. Maybe they would think it was his wife, Lisa? After all, when a husband ends up dead, the first two people the police ask are the wife and the mistress, right? 

But no, this was going to be blamed on him. He just knew it. He took the money from the man's wallet, stuffing it in his bag, before moving to the wardrobe. He moved all the clothes to the left and dug his nails into the wood in the back. It took him seconds to find the groves that he needed, before pulling the back open to reveal some useful items that he had never actually planned on using. He leaned his cane against the wardrobe, and reached to grab a plain dark green sweater, and black jeans that probably hung way too low on his slender hips. It wasn’t something he would normally wear, even when under cover, but it was because it was so different that he bothered grabbing it in the first place. It was completed with a black ski cap with the letter D on the front in a large, gothic looking letter. He also grabbed all three plastic bags from the back. 

In one was a gun with the numbers burned off with acid, a pocket knife, and a larger, flat knife with a small sheath that he could wrap around his arm. The second bag was cash, passports, and other necessary items for getting out of the country unnoticed. It was his go bag. The third was also the simplest. It had three vials of a corrosive poison that could kill within minutes. 

He stuffed all three plastic bags in his shoulder bag, before moving across the room to change. Once he had, he pulled the cap over his hair until it looked like his hair was hanging loosely over his shoulder. 

He glanced at it, playing with a strand, before sighing to himself. He needed to cut it before he left. He didn’t exactly want to, but his hair was as recognizable as his style was, and therefore had to go. He pulled the gun out of the bag, and tucked it in the back of his black jeans, stuffing the ammo in his pocket, before bending down to tuck the pocket knife into his left shoe. 

Was it the most clever place he had ever hidden weapons? No, not even in the top ten, but it was fast, and time was all that mattered right now. 

He slipped the dagger out of the sheath, and examined it. It was still deadly sharp, and would do. He brought it up to his hair, held the ends harshly, and chopped his hair off. 

After a few minutes, it was now just above his shoulders, and not very even, but it would do. 

He picked up his cane and bag, finally ready to leave, before turning to the corpse once more. After a moment, he pulled out his own wallet and pulled his license out of its slot, before replacing his license in the other's wallet. It probably wouldn’t fool anyone for very long, but it would be useful for at least a few days of extra time. 

He rolled his eyes again, before exiting the small hole in the ground. He had a prey to hunt that had just proved itself to be more interesting than he first thought. 

Once he had tracked down the Metzger, he would find out why the man's name was in the folder that had been left in his apartment. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that Dietrich was going to be the first clue in figuring out how his life had managed to go to hell so quickly. 

He walked with a slight limp, and pulled the ski cap down slightly to cover up his forehead. 

He tucked his other hand in his pocket, and let the bag bounce softly against his bag. He would return to Batty Matty's associates for now. He needed them to sort out Sophie's death while he solved his own mystery. 

It was probably just a coping mechanism that he was using to keep from acknowledging Sophie's death, but didn’t care. As long as it was enough to keep his mind occupied until the others had gotten a solid lead on Sophie's killer, then he didn’t care how unhealthy it was. 

That in mind, he hunched his shoulders slightly, and leaned heavily on the cane. He wasn’t going to be Emiliano Altieri for a while. No, he was going to be Liano, or maybe even Dante, for a bit. Maybe it would help keep the heat off of him, maybe not, but either way, it would be fun to see how the world reacted to someone with the mind of Emiliano Altieri, and the actions of a thief, probably. 

His final action as Emiliano was to set the place to blow up as soon as someone left the property. If the rat was smart, he would leave as soon as he woke up, and the place would be blown sky high before the day's end.  
 


	10. The Odds

Liano rolled his neck, feeling the satisfying pop as his muscles released slightly. It had been easier than he thought finding the bastard butcher. It had also been far easier than he had expected to get in to deal with the pain himself.

He waited calmly in the shadows, crouched on the top of an apartment building across the street of the Metzger. Honestly, he hadn't been particularly pleased with himself for this plan. It had been hard enough to break into the apartment of an ex- Erdhenne, but other than that, there had been very few problems.

He snickered to himself when the older man that lived across the hall just sighed as Liano left the house. He watched on the small screen as the big, bulky man stumbled in the kitchen and reached for a cereal box.

Honestly, he had doubted that the man would actually fall for this, but after three days of stalking the fool, he couldn't think of anything better. Which was why when the man poured the sugary cereal into the bowl and reached for the milk, he started gathering his things.

It would be over soon enough. How could it not be with what was hiding in his food? A little bit of rat poison mixed with in with the cereal, freen in the milk, and done. It probably didn't help that the fool would gulp down the better part of the gallon before he would realize something was wrong. By the time he had, he would eaten off the spoon, which he coated in tetrodotoxin, and the man would be dead before he realized something was wrong.

It was too quick a death, too good for a man who had done what Jerrett Dietrich had done. But, while he would die quickly, it wouldn't stop the man from feeling excruciating amounts of pain. Even if the idiot managed to call for an ambulance, it would take them eight minutes at top speed to get there and another two to get to the apartment. By the time that they finally got up there, he would be no more than a cooling corpse.

The sirens never started, and when he glanced at the screen in front of him, he saw the heavy, ugly man on the ground, dying alone and in pain like he deserved. He may have been cruel, but even Liano had certain things that he wouldn't do. Not because he couldn't, but because even with his limited understanding of humanity, he wouldn't torture children before cutting them up and sending their parents the recordings of the child's last moments on the earth.

Liano may not have directly tore the Metzger's heart out of his chest like he wished he could, but he wouldn't give the man any type of dignity, even in death.

It felt good, he couldn't help but admit. Metzger wasn't a good person, or even a bad one. No, he was one of those that deserved to be brutally and professionally tortured.

There were many reasons he kept this impersonal. He could have chosen a way to interact with the other man, but there was no point. He was nothing more than an old, stubborn fool who was stuck believing his way was the only way to complete his goal.

He had learned a lot from the quick look around from the day before. He had known that the man was an annoyance, but he hadn't realized exactly how unstable the man was.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder who left the list in his home in the first place. Had they been hoping he could help get a few less monsters roaming freely? Had they wished to bring it to the police, but been too scared?

He scoffed at that. The idiots had gotten the rat to bug him again. It didn't make sense though. Why would someone leave a list with the name of a man who was there when the bugs were planted in the first place?

For that matter, how long had they been listening before they decided to act? What had they bugged? He knew that Ridley preferred to use little pieces of technology dropped into the pockets of those around him, or, those that fell from the ceiling as soon as someone walked under the place they were waiting.

He tried to think of it from the perspective of the other. They had broken in, not to steal but to prove something. The question was, what exactly were they trying to prove?

That they were smart? That they could blackmail someone? That they, dare he think, knew him? 

He couldn't think of an end game either. For his part, Liano wasn't sure if they had thought that he would follow the list, or if he had even understood the play in the first place.

Liano knew well enough that they had a reason for whatever it was that they were trying to do. Every human could manipulate those around him, but it only worked if they understood where they were going. For all he knew, by killing the man he had ruined whatever plans were in place.

Then again, he could have been doing exactly what was expected of him.

That, more than anything else, was annoying him. If they were so sure that they were better than him in a game that he was only half sure anyone else was playing, then why hadn't they done anything more? Why take so few things, and yet leave the file with enough information to lead him to the door of Mr. Dietrich? What did Dietrich know about anything?

He had considered questioning the man, but had known it would be useless for several reasons, the first being that the man couldn't be bought. The second was a bit deeper. He didn't think Dietrich knew as much as the fool probably assumed he did. He was the lowest on the list, and therefore, the least important.

Once he entered the building of the now- late Mr. Dietrich, he was sure that, if his mystery opponent was as good as he thought he was, the message wasn't going to be in the apartment of the dead man.

Oh no, he guessed it would be far easier. He walked calmly in the front door, and up to the desk, pulling his ski cap down a bit.

"I'm told you were expecting me?" Liano lied gruffly. The other man, a stuck up upper class man who clearly hated the thought of talking to, what he probably considered trash, wrinkled his nose.

"I am not sure," the man sneered, "Sir." The other clearly hated the thought of speaking to his kind with any kind of respect. He glanced at the plaque on the desk. Dorian Wickers.

"Perhaps you should ask me the question before looking at me like trash, asshole." As long as he kept his voice gravely, and didn't look the other in the eyes, he shouldn't be remembered too much.

"The missing animal."

Liano glanced away, mentally cursing. The man wasn't serious, was he? The Missing Animal? That was his clue? What animal?

He paused in his thoughts for a moment. Wait, wasn't the other person trying to constantly prove that he was better than Liano? "How many chances?"

He knew that there would be chances to get it right. The other person wanted him to get it right. The other person wanted him to succeed, at least for now. His... invisible friend had spent the whole time working towards making Liano more and more uncomfortable, right? This wouldn't be any different.

"Four, sir."

He glanced left for a moment, seeing the picture of a majestic tiger hiding in the bamboo ready to strike. If he had four chances, he figured he may as well rule out the obvious.

"Tiger?"

From the man's sneer widening, he guessed he was wrong. What else could the person have been thinking of?

"Peacock?" He tried again. There was only one reason he bothered thinking of that animal. The man in front of him, Wickers, reminded him of one. He clearly wanted all of the attention in the room on him, and when people dared to think of anything else, then when he got it, he didn't realize that it was the predators watching him the most.

Wickers huffed at him. "Two more chances, sir, before I call security, and have you escorted out of the building."

"Llama?" He figured it was worth a try, seeing as the other man spit when he spoke.

"One more, and I will be the one who has the pleasure of throwing you out on the curb like the trash you are."

But, this was about him. Not the man at the desk, or the people around them. Maybe it wasn't just one thing, maybe it was a combination of different things. His eyes widened slightly, before subconsciously straightening his shoulders.

"Lion's eyes."

That was the answer. He knew it. Sophie called him Leo, and with her gone, the nickname would be buried with her. The eyes were missing on the corpse in one of his hide outs. If this was truly about him, and the man had truly been listening to him for some time, then he didn't doubt that the other knew of Sophie's nickname for him.

Wickers opened the desk and pulled out a medium sized box, before asking him to leave with barely restrained panic. Clearly, the man hadn't expected him to get it right. Once he had, he proved that he was associated with terrifying people, and was possibly afraid of being caught by the police if they were as dangerous as Wickers assumed they were.

Liano carefully left, blending into the crowd as it passed by him. He casually rolled up the sleeves and stuffed his ski cap in his pocket. He brought a hand up to his hair and messed it up instead of smoothing it back. His hair felt weird, and he really hated that it wasn't cut very well, but a professional cut was out of the picture.

Everyone who knew anything about him would expect that he wouldn't allow himself to look trashy. They would be right, as it was currently pissing him off, but he ignored it.

He would be as far from any of his current personas as he could be. He had decided on Eli for now, even if it made him cringe. But, the point of this whole thing was to not look or act like himself, not really.

That said, he wasn't sure exactly what he wouldn't do for a brush or a long hot shower in a place that knew what electricity was.

He slouched slightly and kicked a can in front of him, turning off into an alleyway once he felt it.

He hid a smirk. This was too easy.

There had been eyes watching him from the moment that he had left the apartment building. They were good, but he was better. So, so much better. Unless you wanted the person that you were watching to be paranoid, you changed simple things about your appearance. He hated it, but it was probably the most useful method for avoiding those trying to watch you that he knew of. It was the little things that were the most useful.

If his hair had been up one moment, it would be down as soon as he was spotted. Undershirts became the only shirt that anyone saw, and so on and so forth. Seeing as he didn't really have much to work with, he did change what he could. He carefully rolled his shirt up, just a bit, dragged his jeans to sit a bit lower on his hips until a tiny patch of skin showed, and carefully tried to spike his hair just a bit.

He did have one other advantage though. He had seen the two people following him, and knew exactly how to make sure they never tried again. He leaned against the brick, feeling it cool his skin through his shirt, before striking out.

His first punch caught one of his pursuers in the nose. Cartilage cracked under the force.

"You know what I really hate, boys?" Liano asked calmly as soon as the second idiot came into view. Both men were bigger, but Liano was sure that he was both faster and more clever than either of them. He wasn't exactly worried about his odds. Two on one, even with one of them towering over him at probably six foot ten, at least, were odds he didn't mind taking. "I really hate when assholes try and follow me."

He backed up a few steps, and got ready for the fight he knew was coming. The giant rushed at him, and Liano ducked the large fist coming his way. He knew that most people hated fighting more than one person, or any people. He preferred more than that. Two people were easier to fight than 1, in his mind. Sure, it took more time to plan, and jumping straight into a fight with more people wasn't exactly fun, but for him, it meant that he could leave a message that no one wouldn't see.

The giant ducked down his head and ran at Liano. The other man was coming up from behind him. A small smirk played at his lips, and he waited until he was in hitting distance of the other, before taking a single step to his left and turning on his heel to kick the second man just under his chin and into the side of the other man.

He leaned back on his heels, and let his fists fall to his side. "Do you know who I am?" Liano couldn't help but ask. If they did, then he would kill them. It was that easy. If not, well they could appreciate their stupidity as it would be the only thing keeping them alive.

The shorter man wiped his mouth, and exchanged looks with the taller man. The giant nodded, and both of them sprinted towards him. Liano raised an eyebrow, and got ready. Most of the time, in a fight at least, he didn't let himself think too much. He wouldn't let himself get in the habit of thinking before he moved. He didn't actually want to die just yet.

To his surprise, he was shoved to the side, and both men took off in the crowds out of the alley way.

Well, he thought easily, that was stupid. He shook out his hand, and leaned against the wall for a moment. His blood was still pounding through his body, but not because he was tired. Oh no, he was irritated. It would have been better if the idiots had actually fought back after tempting him to sate his blood lust, but he supposed with a small sigh, beggars can't be choosers.


	11. The List

His ears were ringing as they maneuvered through the darkness. Something in him wanted to scream. Who in their right mind would let Parker near explosives? For that matter, who's bright idea was it to pick him up in a car that was rigged with explosives? That Parker was driving. 

If Parker really was a demolitions and explosives expert, the world was dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

Parker threw a grin over her shoulder, seeming to sense his hesitance. "Stop being such a sour pear. I won't kill you. Trees, would it kill you to trust me a little?" She asked, clearly trying to tease him.

Liano wondered if he should tell her that it was very likely that trusting her would end with his death. After all, the woman liked explosives. More importantly, someone gave her some.

He remembered when he was younger, hearing a phrase that, to him, had become almost a mantra. 'Trust leads to death.' Now, that if anything, was the truest thing that he had ever heard. He had, at first, assumed that maybe it wasn’t always true, but with Sophie, that cemented the thought in his soul. 

Sophie had trusted him. Sophie had died. In his mind, it was the same as two plus two equals four. 

Thus, he decided staying quiet was probably for the best. More silence, more walking in the dark, and more minutes of basically trying not to fall over before Parker finally stopped mid-step. As he had been following her by sound, the sudden quiet was almost enough to spook him slightly.

A loud knocking sound made him jump. He, at first, assumed that it was just Parker screwing with him, but it wasn’t. In fact, when a door seemed to open from the shadows, Liano pinched himself, and reminded himself that spies weren't actually around. But crazy women who seemed obsessed with both Park Puns and things that explode do. 

So do doors in the middle of abandoned sections of a subway station, apparently, he thought to himself with a roll of his eyes. As soon as the door opened, a candle was lit, showing two people.

The first was a little, petite brunet, who seemed to be bouncing in place. The second was a copper haired man who seemed to tower over the rest of them. The girl squealed in happiness. 

"Parker!" She threw her arms around the blonde, and squeezed her. The other man chuckled and held the candle in large, steady hands. 

"Hey Luz!" Parker greeted, wrapping her own arms around the smaller girl. "Hey pear Emmi!" 

The taller man simply rolled his eyes. Liano felt a pang of pity towards the man. Clearly he was used to Parker, and had learned, probably the hard way, that there was no point in correcting her.

"Parker." The man nodded. "This All tree?" 

Great, he thought sarcastically, yet another person who had messed up his name. "Altieri." He corrected softly, but cold. "Emiliano Altieri at your service." 

The taller man shrugged. "Fine. All Tree Leaves then." 

Parker perked up. "Oh! Why didn’t I think of that?" She asked with a small pout that seemed strangely off in the soft candle light. 

If this man was friends with Parker, that meant he spent time with her, and, hopefully not, picked up some of her Parker Puns. If he was right, and let's face it, he always was, then it wasn’t worth getting irritated over. 

Hopefully, he would be able to find some time away from the insane trio, he thought, but he wasn’t too optimistic. They were in an abandoned part of a subway station, after all. They were probably fairly low on room. With a bit of luck, Parker would give him directions out of here, and he could try and regain his sanity while sating his bloodlust.   
After all, Batty Matty never actually said anything about staying with the less- than- sane- woman. No one had. The only reason he was still with her, rather than leaving to be on his own, was because she insisted on blowing up the car and dragging him after her. 

It wasn’t really worth it, in his mind, but then again, who was he to complain? She had, after all, kept him from either being arrested again, or shot and bleeding out in a ditch somewhere. 

He felt slightly, dare he think, grateful to the abnormal woman. After all, only Parker would have thought about escaping into the dank darkness rather than on the subway like a normal person. 

The three finished greeting each other before Parker and he were ushered inside. The girl, Luz, moved over with a grace that seemed to mimic Parker, and lit another candle. After a moment, there were five candles in the semi- small room, and enough light to see the freckles on the man's face, along with his hazel eyes, and the tiny pixie woman's pretty blue eyes. 

Parker pulled Luz to sit next to her on a small, ratty couch. They curled around each other, looking freakishly, well, evil in the candle light. 

The other man sat down in an arm chair with a sigh. He didn’t seem surprised by the behavior the women were exhibiting. Liano stayed standing, leaning against the wall by the door in case things got bad. One hand was gripping his black cane tightly, while the other rested casually in the pocket of his suit pants. 

After about five minutes, the young, petite brunet straightened up, and looked straight into his eyes. "Oh, where are my manners?" She asked herself. "I'm Luz MacAllister, one of Batty Matty's favorite infiltration and information gathers. The big lump over there is Emmett Hardy. He's the heavy hitter of our team. You know Parker, but since it's Parker… well, her name is Gardenia Parker, she prefers Parker, obviously. She's the one who-" 

"Makes things go boom." Parker interrupted.

MacAllister gave her a deceivingly sweet smile. "Yeah, that. Small scale explosions are her favorite. Please be careful with anything that you touch. There's a ninety percent chance of you blowing us all up if you stumble on one of her traps."

Parker pouted. "That's not fair, Luzzy Bear. It's only an eighty- nine percent chance. I'm not that mean." 

Hardy scoffed. "Sure Parker. Whatever you say." 

She nodded happily. "Exactly Emmi!" She turned to MacAllister to fake whisper, "I've trained him well haven't I?" 

The other man looked annoyed, but the two women just broke down into giggles. 

After a few seconds, MacAllister shook her head and looked towards him again."So, Batty Matty tells us that you need a team? What for?" 

Liano felt his eyes narrow. That wasn’t part of the plan. "I will be just fine by myself. If I may trouble you for a place to rest for a few hours, I will be out of your hair." 

"N- oak." Parker piped up, throwing her arms around MacAllister again.

What? "What do you mean?" 

"It's like this…" Hardy started.

"When the boss gives us a job, we complete it." Parker interrupted again.

MacAllister gave him a moment to wrap his head around that, before smiling brightly. "Boss says that you are to be protected, and that someone already killed your girlfriend."

"Sister." Liano corrected. "She was not my girlfriend." Why did everyone assume that just because he wanted to get revenge meant that he was dating Sophie? Honestly, he would never, ever, date Sophia. She was too important to risk a relationship with. Neither of them wanted to think what would have happened if they had ever dated, and had a bad break up. Their fights were already legendary enough without adding extra hormones into the mix. 

There was a reason she called him 'Leo' after all. And it wasn’t just because it was a shorter version of his name. 

He was protective over her, she was his daughter in all but blood, but that didn’t mean that they always got along. She was just as head strong as he was, but she still believed that people were good. He had learned differently. 

The thing that first brought the thought in his mind was when he had spent weeks next to Sophie as she cried and told him the horror story of her first and only foster home. The man, John something, had started molesting her from the third day until she finally left a few weeks later. She had been so scared, and so young. She had still been innocent after that though. Somehow, instead of becoming bitter and jaded, she shined even brighter. She always got on to him for his disregard for human life.

The thing that really did it though, was his first, and only, long term girlfriend back when he was 18. The girl, Mara Franklin, was beautiful. She was his first everything. When she got pregnant three months into their relationship, he was ready to step up, and had even gone ring shopping with Sophie. He had been over the moon at the thought of having someone love him as a child would their father. He had found out when she was four months gone, as Mara didn’t really show at all. 

He loved that child from the moment she had told him that she was pregnant. Then, Mara had decided that she didn’t want a child this young, and took something to induce an abortion. 

He never saw his little girl.

Mara had wrapped her up in a trash bag and thrown the child away, and with her, his trust in humanity. He never trusted another person after that, or dated seriously. 

Oh, he had his fair share of flings and one night stands, but nothing that lasted longer than two weeks. 

When Sophie had found out, she had suggested naming the dead child, and he had done so. Serenity Rose. That was the name he had given his first and only child. After Mara, he had never let anyone even get close to hurting him again in the same way. 

He hated that the feeling of pain wasn’t as intense as it had once been, as time had dulled it slightly. He felt like he was forgetting his daughter when he did that. 

The only thing he had that reminded him of his daughter was the first and only sonogram of her. He had given Mara a stuffed zebra as the child's first toy, but she had thrown it away with the child. 

He mentally shook his head. He needed to get out of here.

"Ah," MacAllister said, nodding her head in understanding. "Well, don’t worry, we'll find the bastards that did it. And when we do…"

Hardy brightened slightly. "I've been learning a new technique from some acquaintances. Apparently it's super awesome on those you want to make suffer. What'd they do to her?" 

He looked away for a moment, unsure if he wanted to answer or not, before deciding that even if he didn’t, they would probably already know. "They cornered her, held her down, beat her bloody, raped her, and suffocated her." His voice was probably slightly more harsh than it should have been, but this wasn’t just some random person. This was his Sophie, the only thing he had left in this world. 

"Don’t worry." Parker told him happily, "We'll pay them back tenfold. It's what we're really good at."

MacAllister looked at him sideways, before giving Hardy a hard look. "Fine." He said finally, sighing as he didn’t even try to fight the smaller brunet. "You can go rest in the back while the big kids get to work, boya." 

Liano sent the man a smirk as he was gestured toward the door. 

"Matches are on the bed side table, next to the candle. Try not to leave them on very long, please." MacAllister told him.

"Of course."Liano said gracefully, descending towards the door that the younger brunet gestured towards.

The smirk dropped off his face as soon as the door closed behind him. His eyes darkened in rage. He didn’t know these people. He didn’t trust them. There was something about these people, and how willing they were to help him, that pissed him off. 

Hardy especially made him irrationally angry. There was something about the cocky Irishman that made him uncomfortable. The man was as dark as he was, and there was … something terrifying about how the man embraced his sinister heart. 

Maybe it was because there was something similar about the man, something that he recognized about the green eyes. There was a look that he had seen in the mirror before. The man was an assassin, who seemed to adore everything that Liano hated about himself. 

Enough of that, he mentally dismissed. He had better things to do than worry about the darkness of a man that clearly wasn’t stable. Then again, he wasn’t exactly the sanest match in the box. 

He could barely see in the dark of the room, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need much light. He had something that he needed to do. Liano moved to light the candle that he could see on the bedside table. Sure enough, a box of matches was waiting for him. He stuck one with a sigh. 

This was the last thing he needed right now. He needed to spend some time thinking, and not pondering the people that he was currently stuck with. He would keep his senses about him though. He didn’t trust them enough to relax around them. Especially Parker and Hardy. MacAllister wasn’t as bad. He didn’t trust her, nowhere near actually, but she was more upfront. She told him exactly what she was, was unashamed of what she did, but she hadn't fallen into the darkness fully, like her partner had. 

Liano mentally cursed, before taking a deep breath. He needed to focus. Sometimes, it was difficult to start, but as long as he realized it, and stopped himself from thinking about things that were better left alone.

It was sad, almost, that he had to figure out how to mentally strengthen his barriers by himself. Then again, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

He reached for his bag that he had shrugged off as soon as the door closed behind him, and let his cane fall against the nightstand. He sat heavily on the bed and pulled out the folder. It wasn’t right, he knew. It had bothered him since it had appeared in his apartment a week ago. It felt like much longer since he had last seen Sophie's red hair disappearing around the corner. He hated the fact that his last argument with her had been the last time he had spoken to her, and he would do anything to give her the peace that she had lost in death. That said, the folder had been the least of his worries at the time. He had been trying not to think about it, but something told him that there was something in the folder that he needed to see. 

He opened it, and leaned it against his knees. The first page was a numbered list, six places with lines next to each number, except the sixth. It appeared that he would be working from the bottom up. Next to the number 6 was a name, Jarrett Dietrich. 

Who the man was, he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what Dietrich had to do with anything, and had never heard the name before. None of his informants had mentioned the man, nor had any of his clients.

Something was nagging the back of his mind though. There was something in his brain that told him that somehow he should know the name. The next page was a picture of a blonde haired, blue eyed, muscled man. It was the tattoo that told him where he had heard the name though. It was a grey hen with a short neck, next to the word Erdhenne. It had clearly been slashed a few times, which told Liano that the man wasn’t loyal to the Tod Zerstören.

He grimaced. He had only met one member before, an unpleasantly plump fellow who had clearly seen better days. The man had been a bookie for the gang. Apparently, they were German Americans who hated the reputation that the German's were given, and wished to bring it back to it's former glory in New Germany, a small town up in Wisconsin that many of them had retreated to. 

As far as Liano could tell, they weren't the violent sort. They knew what they wanted, and that was to distance themselves from the, according to them, ruins of Germany, while bringing back the old belief. 

Or, at least, they weren't violent now. They had been up until about 5 or so years ago. Once they got their new management, and had ditched their more violent ways, they lost most of the threat. The problem was, though, that this man was an enforcer, or Erdhenne. According to mythology, if the head of a household saw one, and they saw it flap it's wings several times, they would die. Or something like that. The point of the Erdhenne was that they were the ones to kidnap children if their parents couldn't pay back a debt, or kill whoever ticked them off this time. In the new It didn’t really make a lot of sense to him, but as long as they left him alone, he was content to forget they existed. Tod Zerstören had apparently, gotten rid of all the Erdhenne when the newest leader took over.

All of them either had to change their ways and be heavily monitored, or exiled. The man in the picture was clearly the latter. That was obvious from the slashed on the tattoo. He was not a man that Liano wanted to mess with. The next page called the man Metzger, or butcher. 

That, more than anything, made him frown. If this man was as dangerous as this file said he was, then there wasn't much that Liano could do. However, as good as the man was, there was no way that Metzger was a boss, or even the brains of an operation. He was the type to slice first, and ask questions later.

At least he had somewhere to start, whatever this was. He studied the picture and burned it in his mind. He would find Mr. Dietrich, and find out exactly what the man had to do with anything.


	12. The Post Office

He wiped his head, and smoothed his hair back. This was a bad idea, he thought as he exited the safety of the alleyway. This was a really, really stupid idea. He knew that, but he couldn't seem to do anything about it. He wanted to track them.

Liano forced himself to stop moving and took a deep, calming breath as he pushed the need to the back of his mind. He didn't know who they were, or if they knew who he was, but they weren't important. Not really. That didn't mean he wasn't going to possibly to kill them if he saw them again.

He yanked his hat out of his pocket and forced it on his head. He had better things to do, and as long as he didn't rush, he knew that no one would think to stop him.

Everything was going better than he expected, but that wasn't a bad thing, hopefully. It seemed a little too easy at the moment, but he wasn't going to jinx himself.

He ducked his head and started walking once more. How boring, he thought with a small sigh. Something caught his eye, and he stopped and looked thoughtfully through the glass. He did need something else, didn't he?

The store was for gothic teenagers, but that was probably what caught his attention in the first place. He wasn't a teenager, and he never wore anything like the things he was seeing in the window, but that didn't mean anything. He may not have liked the style, but it was something that Liano wouldn't wear.

The thought of himself decked out in all black with chains and heavy makeup made him snicker just a bit. There was literally no way he would ever do that. Ever. The store next door, on the other hand, was much better. He shrugged to himself and opened the door. He couldn't help but chuckle at the thought.

He glanced around, before wrinkling his nose. There were certainly things he would wear in the store, but nothing that he wouldn't ever even touch. That was what would make a better disguise.

After ten minutes or so, he gave up. There was nothing here that he wanted, even liked for his current look.

He would change his look, but later. He had other things to do first. Unless, of course, he wanted to swing by another hideout of his. He glanced down to the package sticking slightly out of his bag and shook his head. He would do so, but only after he created the time he would need. The package had to be something important, or at least, something that would send him into a spiraling rage.

Of course, by this point, he knew that his next move would be to gain some independence from Batty Matty's crew. Until he did, he would need to keep timing his movements so that he wasn't gone for long enough to make the trio suspicious.

Not that he was sure they weren't already, but Batty Matty had a tight grip on his people, even from jail. It wouldn't stop them from ending his life, he knew, if they so much as suspected that he was going to betray Batty Matty.

To be fair, he wasn't. As long as they let him do what he needed to, and continued to do the things that he didn't have the man power to, then he was content to wait. For now.

That didn't mean he was stupid, of course. Batty Matty may have been known for several things, but Liano knew about the strange disappearances of several of his ex- associates.

After meeting Hardy, he had a feeling he knew what had happened to them. Not like he could judge, he thought with a snort. He was just as likely to get his betrayers locked up as he was to get them killed. He wouldn't soil his own hands with their blood, but that wouldn't stop him from telling appropriate people about their sins.

Only after he had called in their favors, of course. It wasn't worth losing a resources without squeezing it dry.

He hid a smirk. Usually, he kept most of the people who owed him a favor for several years, making their debts to him grow until they had an echo of something similar to loyalty towards him. People like Webber, Tyler, and even Ridley were only on his side because they had something similar to morals. Webber, of the three, had the strongest connection to him, if only because he saved more than a single life with his actions.

Which meant that Ridley was the weakest. The man owed him his life, but to someone like that, it wasn't something he was inclined to pay back. The rat was useful, sometimes. That was the only reason he hadn't accidently told someone who shouldn't hear about Ridley's habits.

That said, Tyler wasn't likely to betray him, if only because the man knew that the second he did, Liano would not only make sure he was arrested, but make sure the prison he was in knew exactly why he was there in the first place. His loyalty to Liano depended on his loyalty to his own life.

He had more people like Webber, if he was being honest with himself. He had several people who not only knew that they owed him their lives, but they wanted to pay him back.

Smirking slightly, Liano walked into the gas station that was by his left. He knew that he needed his network if he was going to figure out anything, and while he was certain that they wouldn't know much about the break in at his apartment, but they might be able to give him enough of a clue to give him a hint.

He wasn't sure if anyone would understand his distraction. He knew himself well enough to know that focusing on anything besides himself at this point would lead to a breakdown that he couldn't get himself out of. If he allowed himself to focus on finding Sophie's killer, he would get sloppy, and that was unacceptable. Besides, as much as he doubted Parker and the other two, he trusted that Batty Matty knew what he was doing.

Liano glanced at the shelf filled with crappy trash phones, but picked one up anyways, before grabbing a prepaid card. He would probably buy just enough for him to check in on the rest of his network. He knew better than to leave them alone for very long. Somehow, at least one of them always thought he was dead, and thus tried to find the rest of his network.

The poor fools didn't know exactly what they were getting into. As he waited in the line, he grabbed a pack of gum as well. It wasn't much, but people were less likely to think that he was threatening if he was doing something that most people considered childish. Popping gum and eating ice cream were his two favorite methods of getting looked over.

After all, how many dangerous people were seen eating an ice cream cone?

It worked better than most people would think, but that was the point. As long as he was careful and 'open', most people would dismiss him.

Surveillance was much easier if no one bothered giving him a second glance. He paid for his gum and phone, before opening it and setting up the burn phone. He knew that he would dispose of this one before the week was up, and probably wouldn't even contact more than five carefully chosen people with this one. The less that they could trace, the more protected his network was.

He actually didn't like most of the people that made up his intelligence network. Most of them were either extremely greedy, or should be locked up. That said, he knew better than to leave them unsupervised for very long. He had several attempts on his life from his own informants, because they thought he was weak. They, somehow, mistook his self control for something that they could take advantage of.

He usually left them alive, he was a forgiving person after all. Well, maybe not, he thought with a small scoff. He was short tempered, but he was someone who preferred to plan ahead. He never knew when one of his informants would try to kill him again, which kept him on his toes, as well as kept him from growing compliant.

The phone was slow to turn on, but that was alright, he was in no hurry. He walked to the post office less than a mile away, and once he was inside, he knew that something was wrong.

The moment the door opened, he realized his stupidity. If he had been smart, he would have noticed the people carefully blocking the paths of others part as soon as they saw him. No one stopped him.

That should have been his first clue, but he was too stupid to notice. He tensed slightly, before going inside and letting the door close behind him. Was this the police? A gang? How had they found this place?

Then again, it wasn't exactly hidden. All anyone needed to do was watch him for a few weeks in order to know where the best places for a set up were. He walked further inside, pulling out a key ring from his bag and unlocking the small rectangular box. He pulled out a few things, depositing the mail and keys back into his bag, grabbing a small, messy package and locking it back.

He calmly walked to the bathroom, trying not to let anyone know that he was seeing what they were trying so hard to hide. From the crappy way that the men were hidden or 'helping the other customers', he guessed that he was dealing with a sting. If they were smart, they would have stopped him before he got in the cubical, but no one said that the police were known for their brain power. He opened the package, and quickly changed.

Once he was in the black t-shirt and holey jeans, he stuffed the clothing he had been wearing into his bag. His hat was next, and he used the water to make his hair ruffled up enough to look like someone else. He dug around in his bag and pulled out a glasses case. Once opened, a pair of fake glasses were next to several pairs of colored contacts. He couldn't do much more for his hair, seeing as he was mostly out of time, but he could force the muddy brown contacts in his eyes before blinking a few times to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling and putting the thick, wired glasses over his nose. His bag was the only thing that he couldn't, and wouldn't, throw away. There were too many things that he had in there to throw away.

He did, however, make note that he needed to switch bags soon. This one, while his favorite, had been with him for several weeks. Once he stopped by his hideout, he would switch it with another, probably a satchel instead of a shoulder bag, he thought calmly.

His mind raced as he drew up the plans for the building in his mind. He closed his eyes in order to concentrate. Seeing as the window in the bathroom was next to the trashcan in the alleyway, he supposed that was his best exit. He shook his head slightly. No, if they had a brain cell between them, they would have realized that would be his first chance of escape.

He moved over to the window, and carefully looked out. It was a thin, rectangle shaped window that was high on the wall, but it wasn't impossible to get up and squeeze out.

He paused mid movement, weighing the odds in his mind, and smirked, digging into his bag again. He had an idea. He knew exactly what he was going to do next. He had managed to grab his go bag in the encounter with Ridley, after all. Why get it if he wasn't going to use it?

He opened his bag of identities, and looked through them until he found the one he was looking for. Milo Ramsey was a Manhattan residence who graduated twelfth in his college for his archeology major. He had a single parking ticket three years ago, and two speeding tickets from a year ago that had been paid off. He was a single man, who was two years and a few months older than Liano was. There were very few similarities between Liano and Milo. Sure, they were both brunets, but where Liano had vibrant blue- hazel eyes, Milo had brown and wore glasses.

He had created Milo Ramsey several years ago, but hadn't used the personality in about six months. He preferred Milo to, say Richard Harvey or Keith Greyson, because they required several other changes that he didn't always have the time to create. No, Milo Ramsey was much easier. A quick eye color change, and a scar on the left side of his face, covering most of his cheek and ending just below his eye, and he was done.

The funny thing was, Milo Ramsey had a job, paid his taxes, and even participated in jury duty several times. He was a bit like Parker in personality, being that he was either bubbly or twitchy, and most people seemed to like him fairly well.

There was only one tiny problem. He felt like throwing up by the time he could finally throw the persona away. He glanced in the mirror and easily created the scar that would stay under his eye until he could get out of there. Thankfully, he had his head down most of the time that he had been in there, and the scar was several years old, having mostly faded to a ghostly white. It took him less than a minute to adjust the fake scar tissue on his face.

Liano may have walked into the bathroom, but Milo walked out. He glanced down mostly, and headed towards the front door. He was grabbed by several officers, and Liano sighed inwardly, while outwardly he jumped. His head shot up, surprising most of the people that were now holding him down.

One of the officers, a man he slightly recognized from when they had told him that Sophie had died, flinched back. He mentally chuckled. If there was one thing Milo's persona was good at, it was making people uncomfortable. No one seemed sure how to react to the scarred man.

"W- What's going on?" He asked, bring fear and terror into his voice.

The officers exchanged looks. "Who are you?" One of them asked.

Liano bit his lip and started shaking slightly. "Milo. Milo Ramsey." He introduced, looking around wildly. "W- what did I d- do?" He asked, letting his voice stutter off a few times, while not making eye contact with any of them.

It wasn't because he was afraid that they would recognize him, but more because it was something that Milo would have done.

One of them sneered at him, and he slightly recognized the older man as the man who partnered with the creepy body builder cop. "Prove it."

It took a lot of will power, but he managed not to roll his eyes as he glanced at the officer holding his arms behind his back, before looking down again. The man seemed to realize that the request was impossible without letting at least one of his arms free. His left arm was released, which was good for Liano, but bad for Milo.

"Um, I- I hate to ask, but, well, I'm right handed..." He carefully trailed off, forcing a blush to his face. The officer apologized, and grabbed his left arm once again, before releasing his right. He mentally grumbled a bit as he pulled out a worn now grey wallet that was almost a decade old when he had gotten it five years ago. Somehow, someway, it was still in one piece. Mostly.

He flipped it open, and held out his license for the officers to inspect. One of them ran off with his wallet, probably to look up his name, and the others waited in silence.

A part of him was expecting the other officer to come in with his gun blazing, but the logical side of him scoffed. There was no way to look past his disguise, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Emiliano Altieri was just as real as Milo Ramsey. Sure, if someone was to look deep enough, they would probably recognize that it was a shell, but no one wanted to.

When the man came back, looking as skittish as he himself felt, he mentally breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed like he needed to pat himself on the back. He could hardly believe that it worked, but was extremely pleased that he had.

He left the post office while trying not to start cracking up.

The only reason he had actually gotten away with this was because he had changed since the day that Sophie was killed. Sure, for years he had been setting up account and creating identities that he could use if he ever got in trouble, but it was more than that. He knew he had lost a lot of weight since that day. He was paler than he had ever been, and his face was more gaunt than it had been. He had never been big, per say, but he hadn't been this thin since his days in the group home.

He walked off, trying not to smirk. He had never been so glad that he was a planner in his life. Sure, unexpected things happened, but he knew that his life would be so much worse if he didn't have anyone else that he could rely on for anything.

Even rats like Don Ridley had their uses. If he hadn't had the rat, or any of his other informants, he would have been dead a long, long time ago. Of all of the people who owed him a favor though, Batty Matty had been the most surprising of them.

The man, while he led his own crew of seven specialists that everyone knew about, wasn't the type to give anything willingly to anyone. The man was as cold and calculating as anyone that he knew.

He wasn't stupid. He knew that he was probably being watched on Batty Matty's orders by the four who hadn't been introduced to him. He wouldn't be surprised if the man got regular reports on his behavior or notes saying he left for this amount of time.

Liano also wasn't stupid enough to think that he knew everything about the weapons dealer. There were probably several other people on the man's private payroll, and if he was anything like Liano, not everyone who worked for him would know about the others that worked with him.

The only way be able to successfully create a web of information was to find a way to keep everyone away from their counterparts, unless, of course, they were the type to need to be superior to the others.

He may not have been as old as some of those in his chosen field, but he had learned from the best teacher. Experience.

Most of him was pleased with how the day had turned out, despite how the day had differed from how he was originally expecting.

He turned to disappear into the crowd once more. He needed to find a new project, and he knew exactly where to start.


	13. The Meeting

It had taken a few hours for them to settle into their newest place of residence. He wasn’t surprised when Parker had approached him outside of the subway a month ago as he was heading back from his second kill.

No, what had surprised him was how long that they stayed in the underground bunker before moving along to the next place on their rotation. He understood the logic behind it. The only way to stay safe was to never stay still. That said, he hadn't exactly expected someone to be waiting in their third hideout looking like he owned the world.

The man was fairly similar in frame to him, and had seemed lost in thought until Hardy callously threw down a box on the floor. None of them seemed surprised to see the man, and seemed content to ignore him until he was finished thinking about whatever it was he was thinking about. 

Liano moved his bag, the grey satchel instead of his normal shoulder bag, to the back room. His cane clunked lightly against the wooden floors. This place was much nicer than the other two. While the first had been damp and dark, the second had been run down and cut off from everyone. This one looked like a simple apartment, granted a large one, but an apartment nonetheless. 

He still got his own room like that was a surprise. MacAllister and Parker shared a room, and when Hardy was there overnight, he always found a chair by the door to crash in. 

Thankfully, Hardy was rarely there. The other man seemed to despise his very name. While MacAllister and Parker had gotten used to him, Hardy still seemed more likely to shoot him than to actually speak to him. He wasn’t stupid, he knew as soon as he left, Hardy was likely to show up. 

He wasn’t exactly sure what the other man had against him, but whatever it was, it was enough to slowly drive him insane. He hadn't really spent much time in the apartment either, honestly. 

The last month had managed to keep him busy, what with checking on his web, gathering supplies, and finishing the cases that he had from his business. Sure, he kept them further hidden from the world, and never contacted them from the same number twice, but being paranoid wasn’t that strange in his field. 

That said, no one seemed to know how to interact with him. He couldn't bring himself to care, though, as long as he got paid. That was really all that mattered at the moment. He knew that most people would have started panicking by now, but he knew better.

He had also started playing a game of hide and seek with the police. They knew that he was alive, despite him starting rumors about his own death. They also knew that something had changed, but none of them seemed to know exactly what. 

The men in charge, James Riley and Mark Peterson, were the two who had arrested him the first time. They also seemed to have an irrational hatred of him that made them angry enough to start a man hunt. It wasn’t surprising, but it was annoying. 

One day, he thought with an inward sigh, he would figure out what he had done to Hardy, Riley, and Peterson. Until then, he would simply think of them as illogical, brainless, irrational children who wanted to play as adults. 

By the time he had gotten up from the place that would be his bed, and walked into the living room, Parker was curled around the stranger's feet. Hardy and MacAllister seemed amused, but no one said anything. That told him that this was a fairly normal occurrence, and he couldn't bring himself to care. 

He fixed his bag over his shoulder and got ready to leave once again. As long as he knew where he was supposed to be resting, they didn’t really pay much attention to him.

"Hang on, Mr. Altieri." MacAllister told him, sitting up from her spot next to Hardy. He paused and turned to the other woman. What could she possibly have wanted? They had all silently agreed, after all, to leave each other alone. Unless, maybe, she had a message from Matty?

The mystery man, as he mentally called the blonde haired, green eyed man, straightened his spine and folded his hands in his lap. Liano raised an eyebrow. Apparently, whatever she wanted had less to do with Matty and more to do with the other man. 

"I hear you work in information?" The other man questioned. Hardy snorted, but the rest of them ignored it.

He inclined his head slightly. "You could say that." He agreed. 

The other smirked. "That’s a dangerous thing to admit, Mr. Altieri was it?"

"Liano Altieri at your service." He met the other man's eyes and tried not to shiver. "It’s a more dangerous thing not to have, if you don’t mind me saying." There was something familiar and dangerous about the other man. He wasn’t exactly sure what, as he had never exactly been big on understanding his own subtle emotions. 

"True enough." The other agreed. "Cyril Hillyer at yours."

"And what may I help you today with, Mr. Hillyer?" He questioned lightly. There was a calmness in the room, as if the others didn’t dare breath to break it. Liano wasn’t as unconcerned as he seemed though. He had known enough people to recognize that the man had gun tucked into his worn light blue jeans. The other was wearing a cheery red button up and a grey trench coat. 

He had only known a few people who wore those, as they were more likely to be regarded with suspicion than answers. 

"It's less of what you can do for me, Mr. Altieri, and more for what I can tell you."   
Liano resisted the urge to purse his lips. Um, no. He was not going to trust the blonde. Nope, not happening. He was about to try to come up with a polite way to tell the strange blonde that Parker seemed happy to cuddle up to, to fuck off. Parker, doing what she did best, stopped him before he could. She perked up, and gave him a slightly insane smile.

"And what services is it that you believe that I may need?" He asked carefully.

The other gave him a smirk that seemed familiar. "Not the kind of services that you're thinking, I can tell you that."

A snort slipped out of his lips. He hadn't been thinking that way, but he could see how the other had jumped to that conclusion. That stupid saying pushed its way into his mind. What was it again? Those who assume make and ass out of you and me, or something as ridiculous as that. 

"I should hope not." He tried not to laugh at that. 

The other man's smirk seemed to grow. "Tell me Mr. Altieri, how is your intelligence today?" 

"Better than your mother's." He said with a matching smirk.

Mr. Hillyer rolled his eyes. "A mom joke. How… original."

"What's original is how you can still speak with only a single brain cell. I know several people like you, Mr. Hillyer, who think that they are the smartest people in the room, and let me tell you, they seldom are as intelligent as they think they are." This was fun, for some reason. It had been longer than he cared to admit since he had gotten into a verbal argument that was solely for the amusement of himself and the other. 

Hillyer raised an eyebrow. "If I had a single brain cell, then I would still have a hundred times the brain power of you."

Liano matched the look. "Has anyone ever told you that you are as bright as a black hole, and twice as dense?" 

"I don’t believe so, but I'm sure someone has mentioned your extreme lack of intelligence, just like I'm sure they would have mentioned that having a set of siblings as parents isn't as conducive to either looks or brains." 

That was actually a good one. Liano made a mental note to write that down later. Outwardly, he was bored and glanced down at his nails in a dismissive gesture. 

"Are you done yet? I've heard better insults from my coffee canisters." 

That made the other man laugh. "For some strange reason, I like you Mr. Altieri." Mr. Hillyer told him trying not to break into laughter.

Liano couldn't help but notice that the other man's eyes were lit up in a way that he was sure mirrored his own. Getting into a battle of wits with a worthy opponent was one of the most rewarding aspects of life, if he was honest. There was something fun about having to go with your gut on some insults, being able to sling them without the other taking them personally, and yet still having to think of something creative enough to catch the other person off guard. 

"I don’t know if I should be impressed with that or not," Liano told the other, trying not to laugh himself. "So does the flu." 

"But unlike the flu, I won't make you nauseous."

"I don’t know about that. Just looking at you is enough to do that." 

"I just remembered!" Parker piped up, just as Mr. Hillyer opened his mouth to respond. The other sent her a dark look, and she cringed away from him for a moment. "We have some pear to be!" 

He raised an eyebrow. Had she really done that? "Indeed I do." That was interesting though. She was genuinely afraid of Hillyer. He could tell that MacAllister and Hardy were just as uncomfortable as she was, but they were a bit better at hiding it than Parker was. 

She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, showing off a bit of her flat stomach as her dark green shirt stretched with her. She gave him a bright smile, showing off her teeth. Liano resisted the urge to shiver. 

There was something wrong with that woman, he acknowledged. Something very, very wrong with her. 

"No silly, we do!" 

He stared into her eyes, and resisted the urge to sigh. "If I had known you would require my presence, I would have cleared my schedule. As it is, I have a meeting in a little less than one hour, Parker."

She pouted. "But All tree leaves!" She complained. "If you don’t come with me, I have to shoot you! I would like pear- y much not to kill you!"

Liano crossed his arms over his chest. "I refuse to go with you as long as you make such ridiculous statements." He said.

Ten minutes later, Liano wasn’t sure exactly how he had ended up in the car, with a blindfold around his eyes. If someone was to ask him how it had happened, he would have been just as confused as they were. He briefly remembered seeing Hardy smirk, and maybe MacAllister rolled her eyes? He wasn’t sure, but he did learn one thing.

No one said no to Parker and got away with it. No one. 

He could hear her humming to herself and rolled his eyes while holding himself stiffly in his seat. 

"Hey, All Tree Leaves?" 

He hummed in response after a short silence. 

"Are we pear yet?"

He leaned forward and let his head fall against the dashboard as hard as he could, before repeating the gesture several more times. Never again. He was never, ever, ever getting in a car with her again. It wasn’t even that she was a bad driver who randomly stopped or sped up, which she did. No, it was simply because he was stuck in a car with her while she repeatedly asked if they were there yet, while using pear instead of there, and, to make it better, she was asking him, who had a blindfold over his eyes. 

He wasn’t sure if she just had that short of an attention span, or if she was doing this just to torture him for attempting to deny her. If the later was the point, she could consider the lesson well learned. Listen to Parker, or she'll drive you insane while driving as crazy as she could. 

Liano stiffened his spine as Parker led him forward. He understood the need for secrecy, and doubted he would have done anything different, but that didn’t make it any better. He hated riding in a car when Parker was driving. He had assumed, stupidly, that it couldn't get any worse than that. 

He was wrong. 

If riding in a car with Parker driving was bad with his eyes uncovered, it was a thousand times worse when he couldn't see. He actually had to trust Parker not to purposely kill him. Sure, he assumed that if he needed to, he would be able to hear the click of a gun as she loaded it, but if she simply decided to slit his throat, he wouldn’t know until it was too late to stop. 

Even now, that they were out of the car, he couldn't see. He tried to remind himself that it could be worse, but it wasn’t working very well. Having Parker of all people, leading him when he couldn't see anything was a test of his nerves. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice in the matter either. Parker told him that they were leaving, and he couldn't exactly fight it. 

With Parker, it was easier to just give into her demands and let her do whatever it was that she wanted to do. 

Which was how he currently found himself being led by the wrist by Parker through what sounded like a parking garage. She had driven for around twenty minutes, though he was sure that at least half of that was to confuse him and make sure that he couldn't find where ever she was leading him without her or one of the others. 

His blood pounded in his ears, and the sound of his breathing seemed to echo around him. He purposely kept his breathing slow and quiet, letting him hear Parkers and whoever else would soon be around them. He could easily hear Parker's semi quicker breathing and the sound of her heels clicking against the cement. Strangely, he was almost positive that he could hear her hair colliding with her back with every step that she took. 

He strained his ears, and couldn't hear anyone else. The sound of a door creaking open made him jump slightly. He hadn't even realized that they had stopped until she had opened the door. They walked for a little longer, but soon enough, he could hear the breathing of several others catch his attention. 

He squeezed his eyes closed, knowing that none of them would be able to tell through the thick cloth that was wrapped around his head. Four. There were four other people in the room, all of which had a slight hitch in their breath, well all except one. He turned his head until he was facing the person whose breathing was different than the others. 

A cackle echoed through the room, and he resisted the urge to tense up. He knew that laugh. Clearly, someone gestured, and it was enough for Parker to remove the bindings around his eyes. Five, including Parker, other people were surrounding him. Batty Matty, with his sandy blonde hair and piercing stormy grey eyes was standing in front of him. 

"How goes the shark tank?" Liano asked calmly.

A cruel smile exposed sharper than normal teeth. "Better than ever, Liano. I hope my girl has been taking care of you."

Liano tilted his head slightly. "I have no complaints." Well, he did, but Batty Matty didn’t need to know that. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he voiced his thoughts, but didn’t really want to risk anyone getting hurt. The first of his unspoken complaints had to do with her stupid puns, and he certainly would have mentioned her horrible driving skills and her mediocre observational prowess. 

"Interesting." Batty Matty told him with a shark like smile. The man may not have looked like much, but only those who were stupid crossed Batty Matty. Liano was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. "I need you to do something for me." The other said, caressing the weapon at his side. 

He raised an eyebrow, and met the others cold, calm eyes. Liano wasn’t sure why, but there was something in the man's eyes that unsettled him. "And what would that be?" 

Batty Matty pulled the gun out of its holster and caressed the cold metal of the weapon. "I heard something interesting. I've heard that you may know where Donald Ridley is hiding." 

"And what would someone like you want with the rat?" He couldn't help but question. Had his informant gotten stupid without his usual leash threatening to strangle the life out of him? No, the man may not have had much of a brain, but there were a few people that most didn’t cross, and Batty Matty was one of those people. 

Then again, the rat didn’t have to piss off Batty Matty in order to get in the man's sights. He just had to make someone mad that knew the man. Hopefully, Liano would be able to get the other to forget about Ridley, but if not, he would give the man up. If only to get out of this alive. 

The odds clearly weren't in his favor at this point, but he had no problem using that to his advantage. That said, he did know better than to attack a weapons dealer with not only his henchmen, for lack of a better word, around, but his supply. Just because the man sold more weapons than most of the others in the state didn’t mean that he didn’t know how to use them. 

"That, dear Liano, is not your concern for now. All you need to know for now is that I am a fair man." Liano resisted the urge to snort. Sure, fair. That was the word for it. 

"Last I heard, he was going to be going underground for a few weeks. Something spooked him, from what I understand. The police, or someone else, was too close for comfort. You know how he gets." Yeah, he thought with an inward chuckle. From what he heard, after his last meeting with the rat, he had discovered the body of poor Ken Allen, and assumed that Liano left it as a message for the other man. Whatever the case, it seemed to work as a deterrent. 

He had given the other an order to disappear for a few weeks, and to check a certain place every so often, to see if he had left any orders for the rat. Strangely, the rat was more effective than he had ever been before. Liano was slightly suspicious, obviously, and realized that the other man was probably hiding something. That said, he trusted the other enough to know that the man wouldn’t fuck up his plans. Neither of them was stupid enough to not realize what would happen if Ridley messed up one of Liano's plans.

"Sit, please." Batty Matty gestured to the only chair in the room. Liano debated mentally whether he should or not. On one hand, if he didn’t, Batty Matty would label him a coward. If he did, well, it would be far easier to shoot him in the back or the head without realizing it. Either way, he was screwed. 

This was a game of trust, he realized. If he didn’t sit down, then he would probably be shot. His only chance at getting out of here was playing along with just enough self confidence to seem like he knew what he was doing. Otherwise, this entire game would be for nothing. 

He couldn't lose this early. No, he was going to get passed this, even if most of the other people in this room didn’t. 

A part of him wished that the goons would draw their weapons so he would have an excuse to sate his anger on their blood, but no, that was a bad idea. At least if they shot first, he could claim self defense.

He calmly sat down and crossed his ankles while keeping his back straight. His mind tried to find a way to get around this without seeming vulnerable. Then again, people seemed to underestimate him if they thought he was weak. With this, they would think he was less than he actually was. 

"You wished to speak to me?" He asked coolly. "Speak."

Being overly confident was probably just about as deadly as being weak, but at least this was Batty Matty, and not some random person. Batty Matty may have never seen his work, but the man most likely recognized the same thing in him that Liano saw in Matty. 

The difference was, though, Batty Matty's was forced. Or, it used to be. Liano's hatred was contained, and carefully hidden away, while the other had always wanted people to fear him. The man himself may not have been very intimidating, but Liano was well aware that most of his reputation was just as fake as his own was. 

It was funny in a way, that the other thought the only way to get respect was with threats and brainwashing. He knew better. He knew exactly how easy it was to get looked over, and ignored. For him, it was better to be unnoticed than hunted. 

He resisted the urge to snicker. At this point, he was probably both in both sides of the world. This was what happened, he thought with a small inward sigh, when someone walked into their own nightmares like he did. 

No, this was what happened when only he acknowledged what he could, and would, do. He still felt a bit like he was in a dream, but that was expected almost. He was so different, and losing the mask that Sophie helped him create was a little disorienting, for more than just him. 

Batty Matty may have known the mask, and known that he could intimidate him, but that was no longer true. This version of himself had little fear, having long since realized how useless the emotion was. This version of him was blood thirsty, without being wild. He was probably less sane than the other realized, but he was slightly more stable than those around him seemed to think. 

A part of him listened as Batty Matty attempted to explain why he should fear the other, but he didn’t bother flinching when the guards drew their weapons. He may not have been expecting this meeting, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t well protected. 

"How is Stephanie doing?" He asked casually, scanning the room with cool eyes. He watched out of the side of his vision as the other tried not to flinch. Yes, he wanted to answer, I know about your sister. I know who she is, and what she does. As soon as his eyes met the others, he knew that he didn’t even need to say anything.

The other was frozen, and Liano stood up, and strolled out of the room. He didn’t need to say anything else. He could have, but it would have been unnecessary.


	14. The Anger

He would need to kill soon, he realized, leaning back on the chair. Parker was… somewhere, while MacAllister and Hardy were on babysitting duty. Thanks to his last meeting with the other's boss, they were both extremely wary of him, as well as livid. Parker was the worst, funny enough. MacAllister had to stop her several times from blowing them all up.  


Hardy was mostly indifferent, but Liano recognized it for what it was, a way to mask his panic. In one sentence, he had played the first of his cards, and would have disappeared, but MacAllister had convinced him otherwise. 

He mentally chuckled. It had been almost three weeks since his meeting with Batty Matty, and about a week since he had ended the lives of two others. 

He would ditch the other two soon, though. He needed to go and find his next prey. Liano ducked his head to hide a less than sane smile. They had been far more skeptical of him lately, but they seemed to know better than to speak against him. He had noticed that Hardy had attempted to track him down several times after he had left the safety of the newest safe house. 

Sadly, it was far harder to track someone who was used to tracking than it was to trail a normal person. The other man wasn’t bad at it, and seemed to know several tricks, but he was nowhere near good enough to successfully evade Liano. 

The last of his prey hadn't even put up a fight, and had just seemed resigned to his fate from the moment he had woken up. He had been slightly disappointed that the man hadn't even twitched once he woke up, but that was alright. He screamed like the rest of them by the time Liano finally let him die. 

Ian 'Dead Man' Brooke indeed. 

"Hey, Mr. Altieri? Have you heard of a man named Jerrett Dietrich?" McAllister asked him, watching closely.

Liano refused to freeze up even a bit. He did, however, raise an eyebrow. Yes, yes he had. 

"I do not believe so." He lied just as calmly. "Why?" 

"What about a guy named Brandon Harper? Or Kennedy Allen?" Hardy asked.

Three for three, Liano thought with an inward chuckle. "Not that I remember. Who are they?"

The silence seemed to reign through the room, and he kept himself calm and amused by remembering how the feared Metzger looked as he suffocated thanks to the poison in his food. Harpoon Harper and the other idiot he had very carefully not watched as they died. He could have rigged the place with surveillance at the same time that he packed it with C4, but he had decided against it. 

He had to admit, if only to himself, that he hadn't preferred the way that he killed the last three. It had been much more interesting listening to the screams of Mara. He was aware that it had less to do with the fact that Mara's death was the only one he was personally involved with, and more to do with the fact that Mara had actually wronged him. Harper and Brooke were nothing to him, and the only reason they had died was because his attention was drawn to him, not because he personally, had a problem with them. Metzger he was a little more annoyed with than the other two, killing children would do that. But he didn’t hate the man. 

That said, he couldn't help but wonder what Ken Allen had to do with anything. Oh, he knew the man was involved with something he shouldn’t have been, but the idiot hadn't actually done anything that warranted him being killed and having his eyes gouged out in one of Liano's safe houses. 

Well, unsafe houses. Or would they simply be homes since someone clearly knew where they were? 

He inwardly snorted. It looked like he was due for another visit with Don Ridley, if only to find out who the pervert had told about his house. Maybe, he could even get more information on the people who blackmailed Ridley into bugging him.

It was something to do, after all.

Speaking of, he still was annoyed that he didn’t know who had been stupid enough to break into his house in the first place.

"Guys were some of those asses who killed your girl." Hardy told him.

He froze for a moment. "What?" He couldn't have heard right. Then again, if he hadn't, then how would they know those names? 

"It sucks for you though, because Dietrich had a heart attack a few weeks ago and died before someone could help him, and one of the gas pipes burst where Harper was staying. Guess that’s what you get for choosing someplace without checking it right. The other guy, Kennedy Allen, ran off with his mistress. Last anyone heard of him, he was in Vegas." Hardy said with a shrug. 

No, he corrected mentally, Allen was nothing more than a corpse decaying near the bed in one of his safe houses. Did that mean that the link between them had something to do with the other man's mistress?

That wasn’t right. For as horrible as the man was, and he was scum, Allen wasn’t cheating. Liano may not have kept a tight leash around the man's neck, but he would have known should the man ever attempt to cheat on his wife, or if he showed any other signs of losing the slight stability that he had gained back. He knew how dangerous the man could have been, and had wanted to prevent it. 

The strange part was why. Why would any of them kill Sophie? Why would they carefully place the blame on him? Why weren't the police looking into the supposed other people that he had used to kill her? For that matter, he should have been below most of their radars for several years. 

He had enemies, who didn’t, but none of them would have dared find a crew to take him apart. No, they were too quick to jump into half-assed plans, which was why they hated him in the first place. 

He couldn't help but think of the crime scene photos that he had seen, and mentally compare the pictures of Sophie's death, and those of the people they were blaming it on. 

His mind started racing. That wasn’t right. No, there was no way that beast had anything to do with the death of Sophie. His methodology was all wrong. Wasn’t it? She had been sexually assaulted, and beaten with a cane, or something similar. That wasn’t the way that the Metzger killed. 

Then again, she had been looking at the man when she was suffocated, most likely, and Metzger preferred to be the last thing that his victims ever saw in the world. But besides that, there had been no stab wounds. No beatings with just the man's large meaty fists. But, then again, the bruises on her wrists indicated she had been held down. Maybe Metzger had been the one to finish her off, while whoever worked with him had chosen the method of her execution. But, that meant that someone had power over the infamous Metzger Dietrich, which was all but impossible. 

Besides that, he would have found out during his little… information gathering session. 

But he hadn't even asked about Sophie, had he? He was too busy trying to figure out who had broken into his apartment. 

However, he had already heard that on the last job, Metzger had worked with Harpoon Harper, and a few other people that he didn’t know the names of. But Metzger had told him it was a robbery that they had been working on, which made sense, because Harpoon was a thief, not a killer. Harpoon hadn't known the name of Metzger, but he had known Dead Man Ian Brooke, who was responsible for several sexual assaults and violent rapes that usually started with sodomy before moving to rape. Sophie hadn't been…

But she had been beaten with a cane.

He didn’t know for sure, but something strange clicked in his mind. If Metzger had been involved, which was obvious now that he was thinking about it, then so had Brandon 'Harpoon' Harper, and Ian 'Dead Man' Brooke. Which also told him that the next name on his list, the one he had gotten from the now, literally Dead Man Brooke, Nathan Maddox, was also on the list of the people he was hunting for a completely different reason. 

Maddox was far more dangerous than Brook, Harper, or even Dietrich, if only because once he started, he never left anyone alive.

If that was true, then he was hunting the pawns in the game.

His eyes widened, and he heard someone calling for him, but ignored it. That meant that he, Emiliano Dante Altieri, had been played like a fiddle. 

Liano wanted to hit himself. How had he not noticed the standard clean up? Each person only knew the name of the person they were directly under, no one else, but they had all seen each other, which meant that he was doing the other King a favor by cleaning house for him. 

The other hadn't even had to lift a finger to clean up a mess, oh no, Liano did it for him.

He grit his teeth. How had he been so stupid? How had he not been thinking about this? The person who left the file had been doing more than just taunting him by proving that the other knew Liano really well, but he had left a list that was going to commit the murder of Sophie just a few hours later. 

If he had known what the list was, he would never have let Sophie out of his sight. She would have stayed safe, if such a thing truly existed. 

It wasn’t fair. He had been outplayed before, just like everyone else, but he had known better! 

…but that was the problem, wasn’t it? He didn’t even consider that the two games were just one big one. If he had, he would have been able to save Sophia. He would have been able to keep his promise to protect her that had been made by a less jaded, less bitter, little boy who just wanted to save his friend.

Two- brained indeed. 

He felt laughter bubble up, not the blood lust kind, but the bitter one. 

On one hand, he was avenging Sophie without even knowing it. On the other, he was being played like a kids toy. Just the thought was enough to send a shudder of revulsion through his body, while bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it down, goose bumps rose on his arms, but he ignored it.

He needed a new tactic. No, he needed a new plan. 

Play me once, shame on you. Play me twice, shame on me.

He stood quickly, shouldering the bag that had been resting by his feet. "I have places that require my presence. Well done." And with that, he was out the door.

His mind raced and raged. He needed to find a certain rat, and after that, he would go and hunt down Maddox. He mentally adjusted his plan. At first, he had simply been going to make the man hang himself while blackmailing the already unstable man, but now, that wasn’t going to work.

He was going to have to plan something extra special for the man, and leave him where people could find him. Normally, he would get rid of the body, but not this time. This time, he was going to leave a message for the fool who dared to think that he would be played.

Mentally, he struggled a bit. He wanted to bathe in the man's blood for what he had done to Sophie, as well as his anger at being played, but if the man died, then he would still be helping the person behind the curtain. 

It went against everything he was to leave the man alive, but he would. Not whole, and not sane, but alive. That meant he would have to be cautious when playing or interrogating the other man. 

Everything would be so much easier if he could just end the man's life. He hated planning for something that would leave witnesses. It went against every paranoid part of him, as well as the sociopath that hid behind his eyes, and the rage that wanted to destroy the man by tearing his limbs off. 

But no. 

He had kept himself steady this long, he knew that he could do it for a little longer. If he was face to face with the man who created this plan though, he wasn’t sure how his self control would hold up. 

He shook his head slightly in the dark. No, he would take the man's life, before going back to finish what he had started. 

Unless, of course, he continued to play along. If the person wanted the man dead, who was he to deny? Of course, that also meant that he would have more blood on his hands.  
At this point, the only thing he knew for sure was that he would get his revenge. No more, no less. 

That said, there were several types of revenge, and until he played the others game, he wouldn’t know exactly who was hunting him. He wasn’t stupid, the other wouldn’t be able to help themselves from finding out how much he knew, or explaining themselves. He never could understand why people bragged about what they did, or why they thought they were so clever for getting away with it for however long. Cockiness was what got most killers in trouble. 

Did this mean he was going to be the heroic man who couldn't help but be a good person? He snorted at that. Even the thought of it was enough to send shivers down his spine.  
Then again, heroes were only the people who ended up winning and writing the books, right? The villain always ended up dead. If that was the case, then, as long as he lived, he wasn’t the villain, and if he died, he was. Right? 

He paused mid- step. That didn’t make much sense, did it? 

Sophie would have been laughing at him, he thought with a small rake of his hair. This was against everything that Sophie tried to teach him all those years ago. She had always told him that he was being stupid by thinking that it mattered. 

It was a strange thing to be obsessed with, but he had never known any different. As a child, he hadn't been strong. He wasn’t attractive in the traditional sense. He wasn’t kind, or caring, to anyone who wasn’t Sophie. Only she was worth everything that he couldn't and wouldn’t show to others.

For years, he fought with the titles that the others had given him. Psychopathic. Sociopathic. Narcissistic. Egotistical. Self- obsessed. 

He knew himself well enough to know that he was a bit egotistical. He was also, probably, a narcissist, but, according to Sophie, the others weren't true. Personally, he wouldn’t have been very surprised if he was a sociopath, but Sophie had proved him wrong. Even as a child, he had been distant and cut off from the world, or at least the part that the other children seemed to see. 

But, one single argument proved it to him. One single sentence from Sophie had destroyed the thought that he was either a psychopath or a sociopath. He cared too much. Maybe not for everyone or everything, but for her, he wasn’t a monster. For her sake, he wasn’t broken, he wasn’t a freak. Even the little monster in the back of his mind flinched away from the thought of hurting her.

He may not have been a psycho or sociopath, but that didn’t mean he was a good person. He was whatever he needed to be in order to protect Sophie from the world. 

He slammed the door behind him, and gripped the strap of his bag tighter between his fingers. His knuckles were probably white by now, but he didn’t loosen his grip, or slow down. He needed to move. He needed to use some of that restless energy so that he wouldn’t fall into a void of self hatred. He felt like a failure, but that didn’t mean anything. Even if he couldn't save Sophie, he could save himself until he had managed to get his revenge.

He needed to find some place safe to rage and attempt to heal enough so that he wouldn’t fall apart when it was most inconvenient. He needed to hold himself together long enough to not only create a new plan, but execute it as well. 

Mentally, he went through his list of the places that held the illusion of safety, as well as the ones that were the closest to safe that he could get. At this point, his usual methods of relaxing were out, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Not really. 

He needed to go hunting. Once he had sated his blood lust, then he could start thinking once more.  
 


	15. The Slug

He paused for a moment outside, mid step, and tilted his head slightly. He was waiting for something. No one around seemed to notice him, and even fewer people cared more than just going around the other.

A slight click was heard, and he nodded in annoyance. The man would be found now. He could hear the sirens getting closer, and his a sigh.

It was almost interesting, he couldn't help but think, how the man had screamed. For such a supposedly powerful person, he crunched like a leaf under his shoe.

As with without a care, Liano continued in his way towards his newest safe house. While he knew most people would probably be more messed up having blood under their nails, he didn't mind.

He had wanted to stay surrounded by the corpse until the last of the blood spilt, but no. He wouldn't kill the man, nor would he allow him to die just yet.

He kept his pace steady and unrushed until the ambulance got there. He glanced down at his watch. 8 minutes. That was how long it took them to get here. If he had slightly less self control, he would have made sure the other’s life was over before even half that time passed.

A part of him regretted leaving the other man alive, and even mostly undamaged. He knew how easy it would have been to finally sit down and watch as the last of the blood drained like the fight in his eyes.

He hid a smirk.

Even if he had to leave the man alive, he had still been able to make Maddox scream. He had made Maddox, a man with a reputation for torture, break under his hands.

Even if he had to leave the other alive, he still felt a bit of warmth in his stomach. He still had it.

His eyes darkened a bit as he remembered the… conversation he had with the other, and wanted to kill himself. Maddox had not only confirmed that he and the others were involved in Sophie's death, but that Liano knee more about the others than he did.

It was irritating. That man, that hired gun, had only been in the kill because someone unknown had asked him to.

At least he had a new name in his mind. Thomas Ritter. Now, being who he was and doing what he did, he knew a lot of people with a lot of different abilities. That said, the fact that not only did he not recognize the name, but he didn't know anything about him…

Well, it was unsettling to say the least. Now, though, he needed information. No, he needed more than that. He wanted to write the man's life story, and sit back while everything he knew went up in flames.

While leaving Maddox alive was more difficult than he had hoped, he knew that not ending Ritter’s life was going to be next to impossible. He had an interesting theory towards so called ghosts. If they wanted to hide so badly, then he would help them. Well, help hide their bodies anyway.

He wasn't sure why so called ghosts made him so angry. Maybe it had something to do with some sort of deep seated issue in his mind like Sophie had told him. Or, more likely, it was just because they were a pain in the ass to track down.

He headed towards the safe house, his mind wandered and calculated. He had a lot to do, but he wasn’t going to rush. The first thing he needed to do was to put out some feelers. No ghost was as invisible as they thought they were. Personally, he thought that it was better to be seen, and underestimated than to think that no one would ever discover what he was doing. After all, the best reputation, at least in what he did, wasn’t no reputation at all.

It was fairly simple to get back, and he used the short walk to organize his mind. He reached into the grey bag and pulled out the keys. This place was his favorite of all of the safe houses put together.

Out of all four, this place was the most normal looking, but also was closest to a safe house of his own. It seemed like a normal two story house in suburbia, but, like all of the places they had stayed, it had its own armory.

Six months. That’s how long he had been trying to find Sophie's killer. Six months since had seen her fiery hair swishing through the air as she stormed away from him. Six months since he forced himself not to go after her.

It had been six months since he had started beating himself up for ignoring the need to go after her. He couldn't help but wonder how different life would have been if he had chased after her, or better, never yelled at her in the first place.

But, regrets or not, this was his life now. This was his waking nightmare.

Every part of his life was different now. He no longer had his office, or his job. He was now on the hook for two murders, probably, that he didn’t commit. He wasn’t sure if anyone had connected him to Dietrich, Harper, or even Brooke. If they had, then there would be five kills on his record.

He resisted the urge to snort as the lock clicked, signaling that the door was unlocked. 

He was only responsible for three fifths of the murders that he was accused of. And wasn’t that a weird statement.

The moment he walked through the door, he paused, knowing there was something wrong. He wasn't sure what had put him on edge, but it was enough to put a shiver down his spine. His sharp eyes scanned the room for whatever put him on the edge.

Hardy, MacAllister, and Parker were all waiting for him in the sitting room. All three were sitting oh so still. Not even Parker was talking.

He closed the door behind him with a bit of hesitance. A part of him wanted to question them, but he easily shoved it down, easily moving his blood covered nails to his pocket in a smooth, practiced gesture.

Liano raised an eyebrow at them, but passed all three and went towards his room. Once his own door was closed, he moved two of his weapons to his bag, and grabbed his cane. Whatever was happening, he didn't know ,but he wasn't going to be unprepared.

They were Batty Matty’s assistance after all. Anything that had to do with that man was enough to keep him from ever relaxing around them. It may, to outsiders, seem like he was fairly comfortable around them, but that wasn't true, just as he knew better than to think that they would ever truly be comfortable around him.

He easily kept his fingernails from showing, and gripped his cane tighter. He took a deep, but silent breath, before returning towards the kitchen.

As far as he was concerned, if they wanted to do something, they could go ahead and try.

He was mostly lost in thought after a few moments more in silence, even if his overly sharp senses were carefully tuned into the world around him.

"Did you do it?" MacAllister's quiet voice seemed like a scream in the silence.

He turned towards them, leaning his weight on his cane, and lifted a single eyebrow. What did they think he did? He wasn’t going to lie. If they asked if he killed the Metzger or any of the others, he was going to admit it.

“Did I do what?” He couldn't help but ask, partially amused.

Hardy and Parker exchanged looks, but MacAllister didn’t take her eyes off of him.

"Trevor Sloan was found dead this morning." Hardy told him calmly, sharp eyes almost slicing through his body.

He forgot to breath for a moment. "What?"

"Dead, as in had his head bashed in by something. According to what the police know, he was heard arguing with someone, and the next day he went missing. They found the body tied up like a piñata hanging over a desk. And guess where they found the lover of the dead girl?” Hardy was pissed. Every piece of his posture was threatening. His teeth were bared, his face was flushed, and his eyes wild. Parker looked trigger happy. Her hands were twitching on the table as she seemed to fight the urge to shoot him where he stood. Her long blond hair was braided back, and she was dressed in short black shorts paired with a black tank top.

Luz MacAllister was blank faced. Out of the three, MacAllister was the only one he thought was semi- sane. She was outspoken, fiery, and reminded him a bit of Sophie. The fact that every part of her expression was closed off made him inwardly cringe, even just a bit.

He, on the other hand, was doing his best not to react. He had failed. Again. He may not have liked the slug, or Sloan he guessed he should call the man, but that didn’t mean that he wanted the man dead. Sloan was the only other person who loved Sophie in any way.

He resisted the urge to start raging. If he finished his revenge, and died at the end, then everyone who cared for Sophie would all be in the grave. He couldn't allow that. The thought of Sophie, sweet, fiery Sophie, being forgotten was enough to make him feel a surge of hatred. 

“Guess where they found her.” Hardy asked again, realizing that Liano was mentally worlds away.

He gave them a small, wiry grin, the first one they had ever seen on him, and shook his head lightly. Brown hair beat lightly against his skin. “Do I want to know?” He couldn't help but ask as he twisted his shorter locks around his finger. 

When he realized what he was doing, which took a bit longer than usual, he straightened up and let every bit of his expression slide off of his face. They didn't know him, and didn't want to. He had managed to keep his distance for a bit, but clearly not for long enough.

Mentally, he was hitting himself upside the head. Just because he was surprised, he reminded himself, didn't mean that he was open. He was better than that. So, so much better than that. 

He knew that somehow, some way, he needed to know about this. As much as he didn't want to think about being the last person alive who knew Sophie, he also knew that he would hunt down Sloan’s killer.

No more would he rely on others. They were useless, it seemed, and as the days passed, the case grew colder. 

It was time he used his own strength to solve this case. He would manage it, and hopefully soon. The faster this was done, the faster he could return to life in jail.

He mentally paused at that. Since when was he planning on living? 

“Your agency.” Hardy told him randomly.

That yanked him back from his thoughts. The only bit of surprise that he allowed himself to show was the slight widening of his eyes.

No wonder everyone thought he killed the other man. If they were right about the argument… Well, his argument with Trevor Sloan was fairly well known, and it wasn't like they actually knew what he did every day. 

It was only logical that they thought he would lose his temper with the other and end his life. 

He mentally rolled his eyes a bit. 

As strange as it was, he was mentally defending the people in front of him to himself. He didn't know them, like them, or even really respect them. Clearly, they weren't as talented as Batty Matty had told him they were if, after six months, they still knew basically nothing about Sophie’s death.

“Ah.” He muttered aloud, knowing that they expected him to say something. He moved over to the refrigerator and pulled it open, before grabbing an off brand water bottle. He opened it with a satisfying crack, and left the room to go have a long, very necessary think.

As soon as the door closed with a click, he dropped his mask and scrambled for his bag. He needed to figure out why. Why Sloan, Allen, and Sophie? Why even kill in the first place? 

If these people knew as much about him as they seemed to think they did, then why didn't they just bring Mara Franklin's case back into the light? Did they know about it? Did they realize that he had actually killed before? 

For that matter, why him in the first place?

The questions threatened to overload his mind as his hand moved through the bag. Finally, he closed his fingers around a small, bright purple notebook, a gag gift from Sophie that he never bothered throwing away. 

Normally, he used a set of coded, yet incomplete, notes on paper while the rest was in his head. 

This time though, he was just doing it to try and organize his brain. His hand moved quickly over the page, scribbling the words as they passed in his mind. Most of the time, he was very careful about his handwriting, taking time to perfect it and slowly moving from one word to the next. 

That wasn't what he was doing though. For once, he couldn't care less about grammar, or how the words looked squished and uneven on the page. No, all that mattered was getting enough words out of his head so that he could finally think once more, instead of the panicked haze he had been in.

An hour later, he could finally breath again. His mind was still speeding, but it was more normal than the chaotic tidal wave of thoughts that had threatened to drown him. 

He glanced down at the paper in front of him and frowned. Had he really known so little? He had distanced himself from finding Sophie's killer, true, but had he really been so detached that he couldn't get a read on the person behind this? 

A part of him tried to look at this like it was any other case, but he couldn't get the picture of Sophie that had been on his desk out of his head. Her battered, broken, bruised body was all he could see.

He gripped his head, he was missing something. He just couldn't, for the life of him, figure out what that was! He stared down at the paper and blew out an annoyed breath. He grabbed the pages and snickered to himself. 

Casually, he moved out of the room he had been staying in, and ignored the trio that seemed to be in the same place he left them. He wanted to roll his eyes again.

Apparently, they couldn't move without his permission. 

Strangely, he just chuckled again and moved over to the counter, grabbing a glass cup and putting the paper inside. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket, and flicked it open. 

The flame was mesmerizing. Normally, he could spend hours staring at the dancing flame, but he had something else on his mind at this point. He moved the lighter to the corner of the paper sticking out of the glass. 

It lit as easily as breathing. He watched for all of a minute before he was staring at nothing but ash. Smirking, he grabbed another piece of paper from his pocket. This time, though, it was blank. He lit it, and placed it in the cup as well. 

He nodded at the ashes, before filling the cup with water. 

"This is how you get rid of something." He couldn't help but say. He lifted the cup in a mock cheers motion, before downing it. The ash was gritty, and gross, but he had eaten worse things in his life. That didn’t even make the top ten worst things he had ingested, he couldn't help but think.

He smirked once more, before going back in the room he called his for a moment, and grabbing his bag and his cane. Once both belongings were in his hands, he moved towards the front door. 

This was a time for clever minds, quick tongues, and cool manners. If there was anyone he could trust not to screw this up, it was Seth Wendell. And that was where he was going. 

The man would be hard to find, and probably drunk, but he was the best, and that was exactly what Liano needed right now.   
 


	16. The Wanderer

Liano rolled his eyes as soon as he was sure he had finally lost the last of his tail. For a trio of an assassin, and infiltration specialist, and an explosives expert, Hardy, MacAllister, and Parker were strangely horrible at trying to follow someone. 

Considering who Parker was, he couldn't say he was too surprised that she was the first of them that he spotted. It had taken less than a minute before he spotted MacAllister. Hardy was the hardest to find, but the easiest to ditch. MacAllister was the most determined though. 

Once he had, though, he could finally try and actually spot Seth Wendell. He started in the seediest bar in town. He had ducked into a restaurant and slicked his hair back, changing into a crimson long sleeved shirt with black jeans. It was easy enough to make sure that no one saw him. 

After a few moments of deliberation, he used his cane. He knew that most people who were hiding from the law would probably ditch something like his cane, but he refused to do so. His cane had more uses than most people would ever imagine. 

Three bars later, and he finally saw the first sign of Seth Wendell's trail of despair. He opened the door, and walked in. At first, none of them really reacted. But his cane clanked on the floor, and the entire room avoided looking at him. He hid a smirk, and walked over to the bar tender. 

He took a seat on one of the stools, spinning the his cane so that the fox on the top was clearly visible. 

The bar tender looked away, polishing a glass. "Have you seen the rose that follows the wanderer?" The bar tender asked. The man was shorter than Liano was, and dressed in pure black with a white apron. His hair was lighter than Liano's, but grey was starting to show at the other man's temple. 

He smirked at the bar tender. There was something amusing about the other man's fear towards him. He knew it was simply the screwed up part of his mind saying that, but it didn’t make it less funny.

"I'd guess that she's expecting me." Liano answered.

"Altieri?" 

He just smirked. 

"She's in the back." The other man told him. Liano nodded and stood. The bar tender poured a double shot of something and slid it across the bar. Liano caught it, and raised his eyebrow. "She's in a mood." The other explained. 

Liano picked up the glass and nodded in thanks, before heading towards the back. 

He wasn’t stupid enough to actually drink the thing. He hadn't actually been in this bar before, but he was well known enough to be considered a threat to most people. 

If this place was any nicer, Liano knew that he would have had to approach this place differently, and not as himself. This place, though, wouldn’t dare call the police on him. 

For six months, people had been looking for him, but never seeing him. It was funny, in a way. He didn’t cringe away from law enforcement of any kind. In fact, in this case, reacting was a weakness that he couldn't afford to have. 

People were expecting him to react one way, so he didn’t. It was something he had been doing for years. Never before had he needed to react so differently to every situation, but f there was anything he was good at doing, it was knowing how to adapt. 

And in this situation, it was better to be cautious than dead. 

“Come in.” A woman told him through the door. He rolled his eyes. Honestly, the woman couldn't help but be a bit of a control freak. 

He did as she asked though. 

Rosalina Nestor was, in a word, stunning. Her hair was dark as night and was tied back in a pony tail. Her skin was both flawless and human, with olive undertones and a light blush. She had a curvy figure that any hot blooded male would drool over, and seductive dark brown eyes that watched those around her with an equally dark glee. 

“Emiliano Altieri.” She said smoothing down her little black dress. “What an… Unexpected surprise.”

He gave her a dry look. “If Mr. Wendell hasn't been expecting me, then he’s lost his touch, Ms. Nestor.” 

She chuckled lightly. “He expected you six months ago after he found out about your,” She spun her hand slightly, looking for a word, “creative escape. And please, call me Rose.”

“You will have to excuse me, Rose. I had several other things that required my attention.” 

“I take it you are speaking of Ridley?” She asked. 

He inclined his head slightly. “The rat was one of many things.” He agreed.

“Seth isn't here.”

Well, he couldn't help but think. That was interesting. He had dealings with Rose and her employer several times in the past. She had always been brutally honest with him before. But, she was lying to his face. 

He simply raised an eyebrow. He knew she was lying for several reasons. The people in the bar still looked spooked. Everyone knew better than to relax with Seth Wendell around. “Are we really doing this today?”

She smiled at him and moved closer, sashaying towards him until she was less than an inch away from his lips. “He's not here, hun. What do you say we have some fun before he gets back?” She asked, reaching a hand up to rake through his hair. 

He grabbed her wrist with a snort. “He still thinks we're sleeping together?” The only reason she would do something like this was if someone asked her too, and in this case, he knew exactly who it was.

That wasn't to say it was true though. Sure, she was smart, seductive, and sexy beyond belief, but she had also been in love with her boss for the last five years. The only person who seemed unaware of where her true affection seemed to lie was Wendell himself. 

The poor man was jealous though, of any man that she got along with. 

Maybe once upon a time, he would have indulged in her body, but he honestly didn't have time for sex or anything similar. 

“Why aren't we?” She asked, lightly pressing her lips to his and trying to get closer. 

He simply rolled his eyes. 

“Because you don't believe in casual sex when you're in love with someone. Now, can I see Mr. Wendell or not?” He usually preferred not to be so blunt with her or any of his other associates he respected, but he was still annoyed with himself. 

He never thought he would be the type of person to take out their emotions on other people, but here he was. If he wasn't so pissed still, he probably would have either found a way around her dead corpse, or simply had sex with her.

But no, both of those were bad things, as he wasn't here to warn anyone, but simply to gather information that was otherwise impossible to obtain. He also liked both of them, well, as much as he liked anyone who wasn't Sophie.

Thankfully, Rose backed up and pulled a strand of her hair out of her eyes. She straightened up, moving easily across the room back to her seat with a grace that few could use. “Seth says he’ll see you know. He’s pissy today, just a warning.”

He hid a snort. It seemed everyone was today, before raising an eyebrow in her direction. He knew that Seth Wendell was behind the door behind her, but he also knew that the man kept the door locked. He didn't feel like making a fool of himself by jiggling the knob and failing to open it. No, it was much more simple to wait for her to open the door for him.

She pulled out a key ring and unlocked it. “Let me know next time you’re in the neighborhood.” She told him, looking him up and down. She licked her lips and winked at him.

He moved passed her, smirking over his shoulder as he felt her groping his behind. As a man, he was more than alright with admitting he had a great ass. A lot of people seemed fascinated, and no one ever had a bad word to say about his posterior.

A part of him wanted to smirk at that. Oh, no, his lovers never had a problem with his back side. Then again, how could anyone have a problem with perfection unless they were jealous? 

No, sadly, it was impossible to resist touching his ass, so he understood the impulse. On the other hand, if Wendell had camera's in here, and, realistically he did, Liano might be in for a bit of a fight. For someone who insisted that he didn’t have feelings for his assistant, he sure was protective of her. 

Protective, a darker part of his mind laughed, more like possessive. He wanted everyone to know that Rose belonged to him, and yet he refused to tell her about it. Rose knew, but refused to say anything about it, or her own feelings, until Seth Wendell admitted his own. 

Honestly, every time he watched the two, he felt like he was back in high school. It was almost sad how stupid they were being. But, he wouldn’t say anything about the topic. For one, he didn’t have a death wish. For another, it wasn’t his business. 

Sooner or later, they would get together, and more than likely, he wasn’t going to be the only person who walked in on them. He wanted to crinkle his nose at the thought. Not because she wasn’t sexy as hell, but because Seth Wendell wasn’t exactly attractive.

The other man was sitting at his desk, his small, sunken, blue eyes seemed glued to the screen in front of him. If he was a betting man, he would say something about watching Rose when she had other things to do. Not that it was that big of a surprise. 

Seth Wendell wasn’t what most people would expect from one of the bosses of the underground. For one, the entire office reeked of alcohol. For another, he was dressed in a beer stained t-shirt and ripped jeans. His mostly brown hair had long ago turned mostly grey, giving the other man an illusion of age. His grey eyes were red rimmed, and Liano was fairly certain that the other in front of him wasn’t exactly sober.

Even sitting down, Wendell couldn't stop swaying, he thought with a mental roll of his eyes. He completely understood why most people rode him off as nothing more than a drunk. But there was one interesting thing that most people didn’t know. 

If Wendell was drunk, then Wendell was cunning. Even in the other's red eyes, he could see the cruelty hiding behind a drunken mask. When the man was sober, he lost most of his edge that made him on par with Matthew Bates and the other most dangerous men in the city. 

As it was, Liano could tell that the other man was fairly close to wanting to shoot him already. He knew that Wendell had seen Rose groping him. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to be fearful, and he wasn’t, but he was extremely careful moving into the room.

Wendell's fingers were twitching for his gun, and Liano knew the only thing keeping him from ending up dead on the floor was that the other boss didn’t want Rose touching him, even if he was dead and unable to know about it. In way, this man was more likely to have him beaten up, and less likely that he would be killed. Batty Matty was the opposite. If he didn’t like someone, he didn’t give them a chance to know it before they had a bullet to the brain. 

"Hello Altieri." Wendell slurred. "Heard you got into a mess." The man seemed to be looking around and trying to find something. Once he couldn't, the man opened the first drawer and pulled out two bottles of beer. He opened his on the edge of his desk, before passing the other two Liano. 

"Thank you." As much as he wanted to drink it, just like he had wanted to down the liquor that the bar tender gave him, he didn’t sip it, or even open it. He simply held it in his hands. Once he had finished dealing with everything that he needed to, he promised himself that he would go and get drunk off his ass. 

Until then, he needed to be responsible. Eugh, that had never sounded so boring. Well, not boring, but…

It was fair to say all he wanted to do was disfigure someone and have a few drinks. 

That probably wasn’t a good thing, he realized semi- belatedly. He knew that most of the things he did weren't exactly good, but, as nice as it sounded, it also made him sound like a serial killer. Spree killer. Whatever the right label was, it didn’t make him any less sociopathic.

Why was he arguing with himself, he wondered, taking the gestured seat across from Wendell.

"I am in need of information, regarding the death of one Sophia Lucas. Have you heard anything?" Liano knew that the other probably had. Wendell was known for keeping an eye on those around him while keeping his ears to the ground. Somehow, he always knew everything, and no one was really sure how. It probably didn’t help that he ran a small group of pure assassins. 

Unlike Batty Matty, he didn’t have different people for different jobs. No, all of his people were adapt at everything, but excelled at killing.

He always had at least one of his people with in yelling distance. Although, usually, he kept Rose with him. She was just as much a cold blooded killer as any of the other people that Wendell employed. 

In a way, it was amusing to see the small group all together, which few had done. None of them looked dangerous. Not Wendell, who looked more like a drunk than the brains behind an assassin's guild. Not Rose, who seemed more interested in sex than anything else. None of the others looked like they would be killers either. Until one looked into their eyes when they thought no one was looking. Then, and only then outside of killing, was it obvious exactly what they were. 

The group was almost creepy in how they were in sync during any assignments. He had stumbled onto them doing a job while he had been following yet another cheating husband. Turns out, that idiot had managed to get himself into Wendell's group's eyes. He watched, more annoyed than anything, as they murdered him by shooting him twice. Once in the head, once in the heart. That was the basic calling card of pretty much all of Wendell's people. 

Wendell laughed, bringing a hand to his mouth in an attempt to cover his mouth. He failed, smacking himself lightly in the nose instead. "What makes you think I want to help you? After all, its thank to you that the FBI, CIA, and all those other government idiots are here." 

"Because not even Batty Matty's people have been able to figure it out after six months. I'm sure you can at least point me in the right direction." Batty Matty was usually more useful when it came to helping him with certain tasks, but if there was one thing he knew, it was that Batty Matty and Seth Wendell hated each other and always wanted to show each other up.

Wendell snorted. " 'course not. Batty Matty's job is to get you out of the way long enough for the next person to act."

His eyes widened. "Batty Matty had Sophie killed?" A part of him didn’t believe it. It wasn’t Matty's normal MO. Besides, Batty Matty had been helping him, hadn't he? Or had he simply been keeping an eye on a risk?

"No." Wendell answered, shaking his head in a large, exaggerated motion. "What do you know about Julian Vasos and Cyril Hillyer?"

Liano closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He had only met Hillyer briefly, but all he had really been able to tell was that the other man's mask was weaker than his own.

Vasos on the other hand, he knew was an ass. Vasos had come to the orphanage as a newborn, and was only a few months older than he was. As children, they had been especially close. Julian had been Liano's best friend for many years. Until, one day, a little red head appeared in front of the group home. 

The day Sophie had been introduced to him was the day he and Julian had started to distance each other. Julian had been pissed that Liano wanted more for both himself and for Sophie. The last time he had seen the other, he had been sixteen. Julian had been adopted as a teenager, and never came back. He wasn’t sure what had happened to the other, but neither of them exactly liked each other towards the end. Julian had been jealous of Sophie, he knew that, but his actions towards the girl were more than unacceptable.

He remembered when he and Julian had been fourteen, Sophie had just turned twelve, and Sophie had been beaten up. It had taken him weeks to find out who had jumped her on her way back from school. 

When he had, Liano went insane. He marched straight to Julian and punched him in the face, before yelling at the other teen. Jul only had one thing to say.

"We're street rats, Li, and if she's lucky, she'll grow up to be a prostitute. If not, she'll probably be dead before she's even drinking age. Besides, you can't even protect yourself. How can you expect to take care of her?" 

No, in Julian's eyes, it was better for all of them if she learned how unsafe the world was in the most painful way possible. He had moved out of their shared room and suddenly, Jul and Li were gone, and in their place were Altieri and Vasos. 

He still, in a twisted way, cared for the other, but he had never, nor could he ever forgive what he had done to Sophie. The worst part, though, was he was right. Vasos was one of the few people who had never lied to him, and had sworn he never would. Not because of respect, not anymore, but because of bragging rights.

He wanted to laugh at that. How screwed up was it that the only way he had spoken to his once best friend was if he had something to lord over the other?

"One of them is leading the other on, but I don’t know which way it is. Either Vasos left the list and Hillyer led the team, or Vasos was behind the death and Hillyer was behind the list. Either way, I can't say who's playing who." Wendell continued, before downing the last of his beer. "Now, get out of here or the only way you'll leave is in a body bag. I don’t need anyone bringing the police around right now."

Liano stood calmly, his mind spinning in waves of confusion. Every part of him wanted to deny that Vasos, no, that Julian had anything to do with the death of Sophie, or even the other deaths that he was being blamed for. 

But, he knew Julian. He knew that the man was just as likely to play someone as he as to be played. Jul had never been the most… intelligent person in the world, but he was like Liano. They had grown up on the streets. They had to grow up faster than most of their classmates, and had to find a way to cope with the world that they had been forced into from a young age. 

While Liano had Sophie as a guiding light, Jul had nothing and no one, not after he had purposely hurt Sophie. 

He walked out of the room, bid Rose a goodbye, before leaving the bar with the beer bottle clutched in one hand, and his cane in the other. Nothing really made sense! 

He hadn't intended to get into this mess. He didn’t want to, and he would have been content for a longer time not killing if Sophie had been alive. But, how much of this was actually Julian? How much hatred would his oldest friend have to be harboring in order to be able to pull this off? 

On the other hand, if Julian had been the one to leave him the list and the other papers, then maybe, just maybe, there was another explanation. Maybe his old friend had found out about this, and left him the list, knowing that he would go for revenge. Maybe Julian had known that he couldn't, and wouldn’t, be able to let it go. Maybe Julian was helping him.

For some reason, even the sentimental part of him doubted that. Now that he was thinking about it, he could easily see Julian's influence on this. Maybe not for everything. Maybe he was only behind one of the three murders that he was being blamed for but didn’t commit. 

He knew one thing for sure, though. He needed to find his old friend and have a… chat with a few other people. 

Because he knew himself well enough to know that in this case, he didn’t want to know if Julian was behind this mess, until after he had ruled out the others. First, though, he needed to find Batty Matty.

He hid a smirk and headed back towards the safe house, before veering off towards his own safe house. If he was doing this, he was going to do this as Liano, not as Milo or any other alias that he had. And in order to that, it required a change of clothes that he didn’t have at Matty's safe house.

The quick walk and change of clothes was enough to make him feel normal for the first time since this mess started. He was now dressed in a pure black suit, jacket included, with an emerald green tie around his neck, and a matching pocket square neatly folded on his chest. 

He hid a smirk. This was going to be interesting. 

That done, he walked, cane clanking softly against the concrete, towards where he figured the trio had returned to.


	17. The Weapon's Dealer

It was easier than he thought to get an audience with the trio. All he had to do was walk inside the safe house, and suddenly, he had five guns with five people behind them aiming for a kill.

He heard a few of them click in preparation to shoot him, but Hardy lowered his weapon. At this point, it was finally obvious out of the trio who was actually in charge between them.

Huh, he thought with an inward snicker, and here he thought it would have been MacAllister, if only because she seemed to be the most stable out of all of them. Parker was too insane to actually be able to keep a level head. Parker seemed to deter to either MacAllister, or Hardy when they were there. She was also the only one who seemed to truly be what her persona showed.

MacAllister was more soft spoken than she seemed, and more calculating. She kept several weapons on her at all times, and not just guns. She was also the most paranoid of the trio.

Hardy, on the other hand, was just cruel enough to be able to keep Parker in line, and intelligent enough, he guessed, to make MacAllister bow to him.

Honestly, he didn't care at all about the other two people, he didn't know them, and from the way they were holding their weapons, neither of them was actually good at close contact conflicts. They weren't the top three players in Matty's hold. They probably were at the bottom of the barrel. They were probably the only people who thought that they could make it out of here without a scratch.

Parker, MacAllister, and Hardy all seemed resigned to one or more of them dying by the end of the hour. But, luckily for them, Liano had better things to take care of than just dealing with goons.

The only thing he had going for him was his speed, and the fact that most people underestimated him. He may not have a large weapon aimed at the others, but if they were stupid enough to believe he was out just yet, then they would be the first to die.

Normally.

Right now, he couldn't afford to let them distract him.

"I need to see Matt."

His voice seemed abnormally loud, even if he was actually speaking quietly. A few people, including MacAllister and the other two goons, flinched slightly at the sound.

If he was actually trying to kill them, he would have rushed forward, grabbed MacAllister's gun, because she was closest, shot her in the head, before aiming quickly for Hardy, and pulling out a knife to take care of Parker before she could react. The other two goons would have been the last to die, just because they were the least of a threat to him.

But he wasn't going to kill them. At least, not yet.

Hardy dropped the weapon the rest of the way to let it rest against his leg. "Why would you need to do that? You know he's pissed at you, right?"

Liano couldn't help but snort. He was ninety percent certain that the only reason that Batty Matty was pissed was because he was insulted on his people's behalf. "None of you were exactly good at blending in."

"Did you ever think that the boss actually wanted you to know that you were being watched?" Parker piped up, seeming uncertain if she should follow Hardy's example and lower her gun, or sate her insanity on him.

"If that was the case," Liano told her slowly, as if explaining it to a child, "then he wouldn't have gotten angry when I left you three chasing air." That was true. If he had acted like Batty Matty had planned, then none of them would have been insulted enough to bother with this supposed trap in the first place.

It wasn't rocket science.

MacAllister snorted, and put her gun back in the holster on her belt. Hardy raised an eyebrow, not looking away from Liano, but they all knew that he was mentally berating the girl.

"What?" She asked defensively. "You know as well as I do that he's probably already thought of ten different ways to kill us before we can kill him."

"Twelve." He corrected. He had thought of twelve different scenarios that left them dead at his feet.

Hardy seemed to agree. "If you wanted us dead, we would be already cooling, wouldn't we?"

Liano just raised an eyebrow. They all took that as a 'hell yes.' and he wasn't inclined to correct them. It was true after all. He could have killed them, if he really wanted to, but he wanted to talk to Matty first. After that, well, who knew.

All he knew was by the end of the day, more people would be dead than there were at this moment. As was always the case with time. He just wasn't sure how many of those deaths would be caused by him, and if his own would join the numbers.

Hardy finally looked away, thinking about something. He pulled out a sleek black phone, and pushed a few buttons, before waiting. Less than a minute later, he snapped it closed and straightened his spine.

"The boss says he'll meet you." Hardy told him calmly. Parker and MacAllister exchanged nervous looks.

Liano nodded and turned to walk out of the house. He heard a gun cocking, and he reacted before he could think it through. He twisted slightly, just enough that the bullet wouldn't actually tear through his flesh, and pulled the top off of his cane, stabbing the bottom of it through the man's eye until it came out of the other side of his skull.

He sneered as he pulled the long, jagged knife out of the other's skull. The body dropped to his feet, and Liano simply scowled at the blood now staining the shining silver. He tightened his fingers around the fox with one hand, while the other was still holding the body of the cane. He leaned the long, black wood against the wall, and dug through his bag for a handkerchief that he knew he had.

Once he found it, he looked up. The other goon looked at him with horror, Hardy and Parker seemed more amused by the dead body, and MacAllister simply shrugged when he met her eyes.

"He did try to shoot you with your back turned after we specifically said that we were going to see the boss." She told him calmly. "Neat trick, though. I've never seen you without that thing. I always assumed it was because of your leg."

"That's the point." Liano muttered, cleaning off the now drying blood with a single wipe. He had always been strangely good at cleaning off blood. Once it was shining again, he held it up to his face. Somehow, he had managed not to get blood everywhere. There were a few drops on his face, a small misshapen spot above his right eye, a large splatter across his chin, and so on, but over all, there wasn't that much of a mess.

He wanted, for a moment, to lick the blood off his fingers, but he didn't know anything about the corpse at his feet. For all he knew, the man's blood was as diseased as his brain. For safety, and because he wasn't stupid, he ignored the urge and simply wiped it off

A few minutes later, he was in the back of a car, between MacAllister and goon number two. Thankfully, it wasn't Parker driving, he would have stabbed her if that was the case. Hardy hadn't even insisted that he put on a blindfold.

That was the first sign that something had shifted once again. No, not the first sign, but the first that he took as a sign of trust from Matty's crew. Well, either that or he wouldn't exactly leave the place they were going alive, so there was no point in blocking their view.

Hardy had dumped the body in the trunk, and only said that he would take care of it. He probably had more experience than Liano did, as he was called an assassin who didn't belong to any guild.

He still didn't know much about Hardy in comparison to, say, Parker, he was almost a ghost. He knew more about MacAllister than he did Hardy, though that might be because the man was more broken than even he was. He was strong enough to fix himself, even if the pieces didn't exactly fit the way they once did. He didn't know what had happened to the other, and frankly, he didn't care.

Hardy did have his slight admiration for trying.

It was an almost impossible thing to try to fix yourself, he knew that better than most. He knew that people like that may look normal, but all of the pieces weren't there, and some of them had been forced to fit in places that they didn't belong. He had always been wary of the other, even after living with him for the better part of five months.

MacAllister, on the other hand, was actually the most sane of them. She knew that she wasn't normal, but unlike Parker, Hardy, or even him, she didn't usually kill. She specialized in breaking into places and gathering information that kept her humanity mostly in tact.

Parker, well, she probably needed more mental help than the rest of them put together. She was, and seemed to always be, less than stable. At first, he had assumed it was some kind of mask in a way, but by now, he knew better. She was insane, shattered, and unable to bring herself even close to sanity. She didn't want to. Whatever she was running from, or whatever had broken her had taken away any chance of ever bringing her back to how she once was. She, like him, had acknowledged that she would never be a good person, but unlike him, she wasn't smart, or stable, enough to go off on her own.

She was stuck in this life because she needed an anchor or two, and she had gotten them from people like Hardy who was so entrenched in this life that he couldn't get out alive, and MacAllister, who seemed to be running from her own demons. The only people that could save her needed to be saved...

Well, it wasn't very likely that Parker would ever be whole.

But that was alright. She had managed to thrive with her broken mind, doing things that most people wouldn't be able to do. The only problem would come if she was left on her own. She probably wouldn't be able to stop herself if it ever came down to it.

He was aware, just like she most likely was, that she wouldn't live to an old age. Parker's life would probably end with her being put down like a rabid dog.

They drove for the better part of an hour. Hardy didn't seem to bother with driving in circles to try and confuse him. There really wasn't a point because Liano knew exactly where they were going.

He raised an eyebrow, but remained silent as he mentally smacked himself several times. He really should have known better. He was a bit ashamed of himself for not realizing who Ridley had been trying to warn him about months ago.

The reason he knew this place so well was because it was his. It was the place he had confronted the rat in several months previous, as well as the place that he discovered Ken Allen's body. A part of him, the dark part, wondered if they had bothered moving the decomposing corpse by now.

The car came to a stop, and the doors were unlocked. He waited for MacAllister to get out, ignoring the second goon all together. He calmly stepped out of the car and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. His cane was back in one piece and it tapped against the ground, holding most of his weight as he maneuvered out of the car.

He carefully walked forward, unlocking it with a small roll of his eyes. Honestly, he thought with a small inward sigh, after his conversation with Wendell, he should have expected this. After all, he had mentioned Batty Matty's name at the same time as Cyril Hillyer, which he was introduced to through Batty Matty's associates. He was also the one who was with him when Parker told him that Batty Matty wanted to see him.

It was a little ridiculous, he thought, navigating the twisting hallways, that Batty Matty was stupid enough to give him the home field advantage. Sure, the other man had probably discovered a few of his tricks that he had left hiding in obvious places, but that didn't mean anything. In fact, if Batty Matty hadn't discovered at least ten of the more obvious traps, he would be a little ashamed of the man.

There was logic in that. If someone saw no traps in a place owned by someone as paranoid as he was, they would be suspicious and look into places that they probably shouldn't. If they saw a few traps, some easy to dismantle, some a little more difficult, then they wouldn't bother looking for something that they didn't think would be there.

It was probably the most useful tactic of distraction that he knew. If people saw what they were looking for, they never bothered looking deeper. Why that was, he didn't know. He was guilty of doing the same thing several times himself. Not that it was that big of a surprise.

He had, on a hunch, walked towards the room that the rat seemed to think was the control room of this place. He was wrong, of course, it was a decoy room, but sure enough Batty Matty sat calmly in the same seat that the rat had been inhabiting.

For a moment, he considered warning the other about the flees, but kept silent. He wasn't sure if the man was truly an ally or simply an enemy that wanted to keep a close eye on him. Besides, if he hadn't already checked for something in the chair than he deserved whatever it was that he had left there.

"How nice of you to show up." Batty Matty told him, clapping his hands together. "Where's Hewett?"

Hardy was the one who spoke up. "In my trunk, Boss. He made a mistake that he didn't live to regret."

Batty Matty raised an eyebrow, and stared into Liano's blue- hazel eyes. "You killed him I assume."

Clearly, the man was trying to get some reaction out of him, but right now, he couldn't care less about the cooling body in the trunk. Or the decomposing one that he assumed was still here, somewhere.

Because he was being a pain, and more than a little annoyed with the other, he didn't say anything. Besides, unless he said it was him, no one could pin this on him. Well, unless any of the others said anything. He was fairly certain that they wouldn't though, if only because they wanted to see what he would do. And, just because of that, he would give them a show that they weren't expecting.

"I was told that you aren't as innocent as you are trying to make yourself out to be. Tell me, why shouldn't I shoot you right here?"

"Because you would end up dead before you so much as finished the shot?" The way that the other spoke, slow and slightly uncertain, was enough to make the threat fully worth it. It was amusing to see how the other seemed to be trying to figure out how to gain back dominance in this. Sadly for him, this was what Liano did best. This was his show, at least until he decided to give the other a bit of slack.

And with how he was feeling right now, well that wouldn't be happening any time soon. Really, though, it was almost sad how none of Batty Matty's... attendance even bothered trying to threaten him. Hardy, Parker, and MacAllister knew that if he wanted the other dead, he would be dead before anyone could stop him. Sure, Liano would probably die as well, but that wasn't the point, or the problem that Matty's crew needed to work around.

Liano was simply faster than them, and had been smart enough not to give all of his secrets away. While he was fairly certain that the others were expecting that he had something locked away for emergencies, he was knew that they didn't know what it was.

Or, more accurately, what they were.

As if he would be unprepared in one of his own homes, he thought with a mental scoff.

Batty Matty needed to either step up his game or get dead. He really didn't want to kill the other man, some stupid feeling of gratefulness for helping him thus far, but he wasn't going to let anyone play him like a puppet. For that matter, he knew that if he could play Batty Matty so easily, the other was probably being played by several others. Which he realized with a slightly sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, meant that this mess wasn't caused by Batty Matty.

He cursed aloud when the realization passed through his mind. He shoved passed the others and knew that he had other people to talk to. Batty Matty probably didn't even realize that he was being played, which meant that he wouldn't be able to tell him much, if anything at all.

He felt a change in the air, and twisted on his heel as one hand pulled the top of his cane off. A bullet, the second of the day, passed by his face. If he hadn't moved, he'd have a bullet through his brain.

"What is it," He asked through clenched teeth, "with you people trying to waste my time?"

Goon two was the only one with a drawn weapon, so that was the only person he went after. He used the long dark wood to knock the other down with a simple hit behind his knees. Goon two fell on his back, and Liano paused long enough for his expression to twist into a blood thirsty grin. He shoved the long, thin blade into the man's neck, before using his foot to force it all the way through.

The poor fool's last moments were clawing at his throat before the light left his eyes.

Liano leaned down and pulled the once again stained blade out. "Any other objections?" There was no sound, but MacAllister shook her head. The others stayed perfectly still, as if any movement would cause him to go insane once more.

For MacAllister, Hardy, and Parker, that had been the second time they had seen him move before a bullet could get to him. Thanks to that, they probably wouldn't try to do anything that would draw his attention to them. Batty Matty, despite his actions, wasn't stupid. He knew exactly who Liano would go for should they push him any further.

If any of them so much as breathed wrong, it would be the body of Matthew Bates at his feet next to the second of the goons.

Liano nodded to them, and headed towards the door. He paused once more. "I'm taking your car." He threw over his shoulder. He could have grabbed the keys, or demanded them from Hardy, but there was no point as they came flying towards him as soon as the door opened.

"Good luck, Mr. Altieri." Hardy told him, something similar to respect shining in his eyes for the first time. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

As soon as he was far enough away, Liano shook his head. So did he.


	18. The Strategist

By this point, he didn't really care about keeping his movements a secret. He knew that he was being strangely candid about his safety, but all he could think about was that this was almost over. He needed to find the next person on his mental list.

Cyril Hillyer.

He needed to have a talk with the man. From the little that they had spoken, he knew that the man was smart enough to play Batty Matty like a stupid puppet, but was he smart enough to play Julian Vasos? For that matter, was Seth Wendell just sending him on a wild goose chase away from his true victim?

No, sadly, he knew that wasn't true. Seth Wendell was a lot of things, a possessive drunk who couldn't see what he had in front of his nose, the leader of several ghost assassins that no one knew if they existed or not, but, he never gave out false information. Ever.

If someone even tried to accuse him of lying, he would first prove himself, then leave the idiot with several of his associates never to be seen again. He may not always give people the answers they wanted, or even tell the whole truth, but he didn't lie. If he said that it was between Matthew Bates, Cyril Hillyer, and Julian Vasos, then it was.

He hoped that he didn't need to visit his friend at all, in fact, if he was really lucky, his one time best friend would never even know that he was a suspect for a few hours.

That decided, he unlocked the door and slid inside the sleek dark red car. He adjusted the mirrors and his seat, before locking the seat belt across his body and starting the car. It seemed to purr around him. He hid a smirk and put it in gear. He had a rat to find.

It took him several hours to finally get a hold of someone that had seen the rat, but that wasn't a surprise. Ridley knew that he had pissed off several dangerous people, including Liano, but was more worried about someone else finding him. Strangely enough, he also got a bite on the name Cyril Hillyer. One of his people knew of the man, but not much more than he dealt in information, and was frequently hired by gangs and other groups to plan out tactics that would take out their enemies.

He could admit it, if only to himself alone in a car, he was a bit jealous. He had to hunt down cheating spouses, while the other got to blackmail gangs and was apparently good enough that only a few of the people who hired him knew his name. The other also had a nickname of his own. The Ghostly Hill. It was just about as stupid as his own nickname, but it didn't mean that it was inappropriate. The man was almost impossible to track down by normal means.

But, Liano wasn't normal.

Liano spent several years building up a silent army that he had never used before. Now that he was, the information seemed to flood him. He parked in an garage in the middle of the city, leaving the keys inside the car on the seat, before smirking and walking with a small thud of his cane echoing through the building.

He had asked for a car that was registered under the name Milo Ramsey. That was the name he was using for now. Until he had a better idea of a name, then, maybe, he might use it.

Sure enough, there was a silver car parked exactly where he had asked for it to be, with the keys in the front seat. He opened the door, having ditched both the car and the body in the trunk, and started it. He needed to get his hands on a bit more information, and he knew who may have it. He glanced in the back seat, and sure enough, there was Don Ridley, tied up and clearly terrified.

He almost couldn't believe that these people were willing to help him, even if it included some less than legal things. One person, Avery Summers, had acquired the car from her husband's car lot and made sure all of the paperwork was in order. He had asked for the car the day before, and had originally planned to pick it up in front of his old office, until he had a better idea. He called another person, George Powers, and asked him to grab the rat and hand him off to Charles Black, who brought him to the car, and brought the car here.

He was both astounded and proud of the people he had called to help him. He hadn't even used blackmail. He just called and asked. He could have, but he also knew that blackmail wasn't going to be that useful right now. Or at least, not against the people he was using this time.

They were all normal people with every day jobs, and a few dirty little secrets, but nothing that he really wanted to expose. All three of them were humans who had made a few stupid mistakes. That was it. That was really all that there was to it.

Maybe it was because he hadn't had to really do more than make a few calls, that he felt so strange. He was used to doing most of his own foot work. He didn't have the sheer numbers that some people relied on, well, he supposed he did, but he didn't want to use them and get them caught. No, each of the people he had asked to do him a favor, he knew exactly what they could do, and didn't risk them. He refused to.

They worked flawlessly, as he expected.

He adjusted the rearview mirror and glanced at the other. "So, Ridley, the ghost of hills. What do you know about him?" He reached back and pulled the gag out of the rats mouth.

"Bellaview Plaza. Penthouse." He breathed out. Clearly, the rat had known exactly what he was going to ask, and knew that unless he had something good, there was no way that he was getting out of this.

"Good. One more thing. That safe house that you attempted to borrow a few months ago? Make sure that everyone who wants to live is cleared out and press 7- 5- 3- 1- 5- 9. Got it?"

"7- 5- 3- 1- 5- 9" Ridley parroted back.

"Very good. Once you type that in the front key pad, run like hell. You'll have forty five seconds. If I find out you didn't type in the code, I'll end your life. There will be no place that you can hide from me. Do you understand?" The other man nodded several times. Liano reached over the back of the seat and untied the other. "Now, get out of here before you stain the car with your flees."

The other thanked him several times, and scrambled out of the car. Ridley wasn't like most of his informants. Unlike most of them, Ridley wouldn't hesitate to sell Liano out if he thought that he was either a) in danger, or b) someone was paying him. Ridley knew he was dangerous, and feared him, but his greed outweighed his fear.

It was almost sad, he thought as he put the keys in the ignition, his greed would most likely get him killed.

Now, if Liano wasn't intelligent, he would simply rush over to Bellaview, and break into the penthouse before ambushing his prey. He knew that was a stupid idea, but, he also knew that he didn't have the time to spend on preparation. He also knew, from how quickly the rat had spit out the location, that it was probably a trap.

He pondered for a moment, before smirking evilly. It had been several years since he had purposely sprung a trap. It might be interesting to get some practice.

It was an easy trip, especially for someone who knew the roads like he did. The apartments that he was looking for were the nicest in the city, in the powerful and rich south side, instead of the poorer north side where he lived. Bellaview was one of the newer apartment complexes, and boasted an amazing view no matter where you bought.

It was also where his newest prey was waiting. He and Cyril Hillyer had to have a rather interesting talk. He parked in the shade of a too green tree, and pocketed the keys. His bag was once again slung over his shoulder, and his cane once more in his hand. He wasn't sure he would be able to make it out of here without either of his things.

He moved towards the entrance and waved at a few of the people, leaning heavily on his cane. He had found out long ago that with his cane, people underestimated him more. They were also both kinder, subconsciously wondering what was wrong with him, and more patient when he had his cane.

It took little time to get someone to let him in, and he pressed the button for the penthouse before leaning back against the cool silver walls. He winked at the camera in the right corner as the doors opened. Sure enough, there was only one door.

He walked over to it, knocked, and froze.

The door was already open.

He pressed his cane lightly against the door, listening as it creaked. The entire place was doused in darkness, and the scent of blood was overwhelming. It was like a nightmare, he thought distantly.

Liano paused for a moment, took a deep breath, before walking inside. The phrase "Walking into a nightmare" echoed through his head. Sophie had used it often, saying it from the littlest things to the things she was most afraid of. In her mind, the more she shined light on her darkness, the less scary it would be. He wondered, for a moment, if that was what she was thinking when she realized what was about to happen.

He shook his head to clear it, and walked insider the darkness, gripping his cane slightly harder than he normally would. He heard someone choking and coughing, and decided that was as good of a way to go as any. He really, really didn't want to be blamed for another death.

His foot hit something, and it groaned. He reached into his bag, mentally smacking himself, and pulled out a small flashlight. He flicked it on, and cursed aloud. The body on the floor chuckled breathily. There on the floor, was Cyril Hillyer. He was clutching his stomach, his face furrowed in pain, but he didn't seem inclined to do anything about it.

Liano knelt down next to the other man, moving the flashlight from the man's face to his abdomen. There was a hole in the man's side. He was bleeding out from what looked to be at least four shots. The fact that the other man was still conscious, responsive, hell alive, was nothing short of a miracle.

His hand shot to his pocket and he pulled out his phone. A bloody hand on his wrist was enough to stop him.

"I'm going to die, Mr. Altieri." Mr. Hillyer wheezed. "No need to… make this more… demeaning."

His face was covered in sweat, and the hand gripped his arm harder as a grimace overtook his features.

"I…" Liano trailed off. The other wasn't wrong. Even if the ambulance somehow managed to get here in the next five minutes, it would already be too late. He could see the light fading already, faster than he thought.

A part of him was satisfied with the blood, but most of him was raging. Whoever did this would suffer. He mentally swore it. It was the least he could do for suspecting the other man.

"It's not your fault... knew what I was getting into…" Mr. Hillyer laughed quietly, and Liano couldn't help but chuckle slightly.

"Don't we all. This is the price of power. That's what my friend used to call it. The most powerful people die alone…" He trailed off with a small sigh. Julian had been the one to tell him that.

Mr. Hillyer shook his head slightly. "Not alone." He gasped out. "You need… to run."

"I'm not leaving." Liano told the other. He felt no desire to leave, even if he was ruining his suit with the blood of the other.

"Don't understand!" Mr. Hillyer hissed. "Take what you need… and run. Get out… of this hell hole. Be safe!"

He raised an eyebrow at that. "What makes you think that I'm not safe?" He knew he wasn't. That was obvious from the trail of dead bodies that seemed intent in drowning him in their blood.

The other man quirked his lips a bit, and coughed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth, and he knew that the time had come. The other was fading fast.

"I… wrote the…" He coughed again. "I wrote the list." The other managed to say.

By the time Liano managed to unfreeze, the other man was dead.

He closed his eyes. Cyril Hillyer, in his own weird way, was trying to protect him. And how did he repay that debt? By watching the man choke on his own blood. Something warm hit his hand, and he shined the light on it. He lifted it closer to his eyes, and tilted his head slightly.

Water.

There was water on his hand. He glanced around, shining the light towards the ceiling in hopes of seeing where it came from. His hand lifted to his face once more, this time to pinch the bridge of his nose.

That was when he realized where the water came from. It came from him.

He was… crying? Was that even possible?

He couldn't even remember the past time he had shed a tear. Not when he found out about what happened in Sophie's foster home. Not when he had gotten in the fight with Julian. Not when he found out that the only woman he ever cared about in a romantic sense slaughtered his first daughter. Not even when Sophie died had he cried even a single tear.

He shook his head and wiped his face. He knew exactly what he had to do. He wasn't sure he was strong enough to confront Jul, but for all of those that had suffered because of him, he would try. At least four people would have been alive at this moment if he had killed the other years ago when he first noticed the change.

Every part of him screamed against it, but he had created the other, and it was far kinder for him to deal with the monster his best friend had become than to let someone else either kill him, or lock him away. He couldn't let anyone do that to his best friend.

So, he would.

He shined the light against the wall until he had found the light switch. He flicked it upwards, and carefully didn't look at the corpse lying on the ground. He walked over to the wardrobe, and hoped he could find something of the dead man's to wear. He couldn't afford to get caught until he put his friend, his one time brother, down.


	19. The Bond

His heart was breaking. He hadn't even thought it was possible. Somehow, even when he was choking on his own blood, Hillyer had managed to get the last words in. Four little words. Four tiny words, just a few simple syllables had torn out his already dead heart.

I created the list.

Mr. Hillyer had created the list. Wendell had told him that he wasn’t sure which of them had created the list, however, there was one obvious thing. One person created the list to help Liano find out who was connected to Sophie's death. Another person had done the opposite, killing sweet Sophie, and planned this. One person tried to help Liano without actually saying anything until it was too late. But the other had created a hit on Sophie. And that other person had been Julian.

The fact that Julian had fallen so far was almost enough to make his heart stop. It didn’t make any sense. His friend was many things, cruel, sarcastic, yet, Liano had never had a better best friend. Sure, they had drifted apart, but Liano had never once doubted that Julian would be there for him, just as he would be there for his friend. 

Then again, only Jul, Sophie, the monster, and him knew what had happened to Sophie in the foster home. Only four people knew that she had been raped, and only three of them knew it was her greatest fear that it would happen again. That Julian, that his one time best friend, would have been able to not only plan something like this, but go through with it, was enough to make him sick.

He swallowed down the bile that tried to rise in his throat and tried not to throw up. Everything was wrong with this entire situation. A part of him wished that the man was lying, that maybe the mastermind behind this incident was now dead, but he knew better. 

That meant that the person he had been hunting the entire time had been his best friend. He shook his head again and stumbled away from the body of Cyril Hillyer. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. He couldn't hurt the other. He had never been able to. He felt awful after punching them once, and that was after he and his friends, he mentally sneered the word, had beaten sweet Sophie. Sure, he hadn't really spoken to Julian after that, but he still felt awful about it.

Julian was the one person that had known him from a young age. Julian had been there for him as he discovered himself, and pushed his boundaries. Sure, he had distanced himself over the years, and even though they didn't really know each other anymore, he knew the other boy better than any other person ever could. Julian had known his dreams, and everything that he had gone through, Liano knew that he didn't have to go through it alone.

The sound of his friends nose breaking under his power had caused shivers to go down his spine, but not the normal ones. No, these were filled with guilt and horror instead of pleasure and excitement. Even hurting Sophie had caused the good shiver that always made him hate himself a little more.

It wasn’t right. And it didn’t make any sense. Julian was smart, determined, and calculated every possible move that anyone could make against him several dozen times before he moved. He tried to tell himself that maybe it was an accident. Maybe the other hadn't actually meant to kill her, and simply wanted to show her that it wasn’t as safe as she always seemed to think it was.

That was a good lesson to learn, and a necessary one.

But no, if Sophie was dead, and she certainly was, then it had to have been planned by the other. He couldn't see Julian taking it this far, even if he always hated the younger red head. Then again, he hadn't exactly expected to take this nightmare so far either.

He hoped, even if he felt awful for doing so, that this was like a nightmare for the other as well. That things had just gone too far. He wanted to hold onto that hope because this was Julian, but even his inner monster told him he was being an idiot.

Julian was just as capable of murder as he was.

He adjusted the clothing he had borrowed from the dead man on his frame. He had never noticed before, but it seemed the man had planned for everything. Imagine his surprise when he opened the wardrobe and saw one of his suits, neatly pressed and hanging innocently waiting for him.

He had each suit custom made, but he had changed a lot, physically at least. He had lost weight, he had known that since the days he had spent in jail. He hadn't, however, expected to need a belt to keep his pants up.

He felt like a wanna be gangster who thought his butt began under his ass. But, he also didn’t look like himself, and he guessed that was the point. He may have been wearing one of his suits, but no one expected his hair to be so much shorter and jagged, or for him to show his face looking less than perfect.

Snorting, he looked at himself in the mirror once more. He looked perfect alright.

Like a perfect fool that is.

Besides, what could someone like him need here? He didn’t, as far the rest of the world knew, know anyone here. Then again, as far as anyone knew, he wasn’t even in the united states anymore. No smart person on the run would be after this long.

Unless they were dead.

He wouldn’t be surprised if everyone thought he was dead. He had several fairly dangerous enemies, that much was obvious, but anyone who actually knew him knew that he wouldn’t leave with unfinished business.

The list wasn’t even in his mind anymore. He couldn't have cared less about the goons used to actually kill Sophie, not when he had the man behind it in his sights. He shook his head slightly and lifted his bag once more over his shoulder.

Something crunched under his foot, and he lifted it slightly. A piece of paper was crinkled into a small ball. Curious, he picked it up and unfolded it.

North Side Storage House 536.

Well done Mr. Hillyer, he thought. He knew that the man didn’t want him anywhere near his killer, but it seemed that he understood that he couldn't leave this alone. Not when there was so much as stake.

He wasn’t sure how many people Julian had killed. For that matter, he wasn’t sure how many more the other would kill, but he knew that Julian would keep killing until he was physically unable to do so ever again. The only way to do that, was to kill the other.

As he waited for the elevator to arrive, he shivered. Something wasn’t right. Casually, he walked over to the stairs and went down a flight so that he could see out the window. Several cop cars surrounded the hotel. None of the sirens were going lit, which meant that they were trying to be sneaky. That also meant that the elevators were off limits. He banged his head against the wall for a moment, and sighed loudly. Great, just great.

He resisted the urge to groan as he looked down the winding square stair cases. This, he decided, was going to take forever. Every single person outside was going to be looking for Liano, and every single person was going to be looking for a monster. For once in his life, he sneered, he wasn't going to be the monster. No, that side was going to be hidden in the depths of his mind until he was face to face with Julian. If the other had fallen so deeply, then maybe, just maybe, Liano's own monster staring him in the face would be enough to wake Julian up. 

Sadly, he didn’t have forever to plan. He only had minutes, at the most, to make it to his car and get out of here before anyone realized not only where he was, but who he was. It wasn't likely that they would be able to easily find him once he was gone. He had the only copy of the address in his pocket, and he certainly wasn't going to drop it. Sure, he was planning on tipping them off, even if it was just enough for them to be several hours behind him, but he wasn't going to make things that easy for them. Besides, he was smart enough to know that he would already be blamed for Cyril Hillyer's death, along with the others he didn't actually commit. If he was going to jail for the rest of his life, or if he was going to die soon, then he wasn't going to let anyone stop him from trying to save his once best friend. 

And he would. 

Just, not in the way he hoped, more than likely. 

He would save Julian from himself, at any cost, and to do that, he needed to get out of Bellaview as quickly as possible. He glanced around, trying to see if there was anything else that could possibly be used to defend himself, if needed, and hid a curse. There was only so much someone could use to get rid of someone on a freaking stair case. 

Maybe he was jumping to conclusions, he thought, maybe the police weren't here for him at all, but for someone else. His cynical side sneered at the thought. There was no such thing as a coincidence, and this, along with the other accidental meetings, had to be set up by someone. He just didn't know who.

He wondered, trying to calm his racing mind, what had tipped them off. He didn’t really have time to wonder though. Every step was starting to hurt, and he couldn't exactly speed up, unless he wanted to trip. He was in good shape for his age, but the cane wasn’t just for a weapon or for looks. His right ankle was starting to throb, and he knew that if he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t be able to walk for days. He stopped, and glanced at the rails considering…

He had seen children slide down the banisters before, so why couldn't he use that same trick to save some time. Sure he never had tried to do so before, but that didn’t mean he couldn't. Right? How difficult could it be?

He stood at the top of one of the next stair case, and threw a leg over the metal railing. It was extremely uncomfortable, and as soon as he started to move, he knew that this was a really, really bad idea.

Twenty minutes later, he was at his car, and ducking his head as he rushed past the panicking people. His face was lit up in humiliation, and he refused to look anyone in the eyes. Thankfully, that added to his being able to blend in with the crowd that was now being ushered out of the building. He was never doing that again. He learned his lesson. It would have been bad enough if he just landed on his ass, but no, oh no. There was a metal ball at the bottom of the staircase.

Suffice to say he didn’t want to risk talking and sounding like he was a twelve year old girl. He couldn't believe he had been stupid enough to try that. His ankle may not have been hurting, but something else was throbbing in pain. And it wasn’t his pride.

Or was it? Depending on who you asked, it might have been.

He shook his head lightly, rolling his eyes as he started the car. He wanted ice at this point, but he wasn’t about to let anyone else know what he had done. He would never live it down, even if only he knew about it. If anyone else did, well he might as well say goodbye to both his pride and his sanity.

He sneered as he backed up the car, and switched gears before speeding out into the traffic.

So close, yet so far.

He had another place in mind now. He would take it slow, though, and hopefully, by the time he got there, he would be able to both stand and talk normally. This was going to be difficult enough without having to deal with squeaking like he was mid puberty again.


	20. The Truth

The warehouse was empty looking, abandoned and covered in vines, rust, and cobwebs, but Liano knew better. He was smart enough to realize that this was set up to look abandoned versus actually being left to rot. That said, he wasn't the only smart one, he knew that underestimating Julian was a good way to get shot. 

His best friend had always been smarter than people thought. Julian wasn't particularly good at school, per say, but the other was always more interested in people watching than anything else. Liano was a little different. He watched people, but the only reason he knew as much as he did was because of hours of watching. Where Liano had to learn, to Julian, it came naturally. He was charming because it was just who he was. 

Memories danced behind his eyelids, but he shoved them away. He had to focus, unless he wanted to get hurt. He really hoped that he could reason with his oldest friend, but somehow, he doubted it. This entire mess had ruined more than just his name, his reputation, or even his job. Since Sophie had died, he had lost his entire existence. 

A part of him wanted to hope that there was such a thing as redemption, for Julian's sake, as well as his own, but somehow, the logical side of him doubted it would be that easy. That said, he wasn't sure that he could ever forgive his onetime brother for what he had done. He wouldn't, however, pass judgment until he knew for sure either way. For all he knew, Hillyer had been lying. He really hoped that the man had been, but it was Julian.

He couldn't help but remember when they had been around five years old and had lea learned the hard way how cruel the world could be. One of the older children had broken one of the caretakers favorite figurines. After all these years, Liano couldn't even remember what the darn thing had looked like, but he certainly remembered what the caretaker had done when the two boys had been found in the halls next to the womans office. Each of them had been given fifty hits with the wooden spoon that was the dread of each child. If that wasn't bad enough, they were also locked in a room together for four days with no food and only a small cup of water once a day.

Back then, he hadn't been able to do anything, but he remembered the silence and the horror that had grown with every passing day. He was sure, by this point, that no one knew what the woman had done to them, but he remembered that they had only been let out because they were being inspected the next day.

He didn't want to admit it, but he knew that memory was one of those that shaped him. He learned to stop caring about other, and had made a promise that no one would ever be allowed to hurt him like that again. That was the night that he and Julian lost so much more than just a few pounds that they couldn't really afford to lose.

Several other memories tried to overwhelm him, but he just smiled bitterly. Julian had been messed up as a child, that was true, but unlike Liano, he had never feared what he could become. He had embraced the darkness that Liano had tried so hard to avoid. He wasn't really sure how much the other had changed after leaving the orphanage, but that didn't mean that he wasn't aware that both of them had the capability to murder someone in cold blood.

He blinked as a thought accord to him. What if Batty Matty was the one who called the police to Bellaview? What if Batty Matty was at the other side of the doors? What if the man had been playing him the entire time, and was either working with his old friend, or simply used a connection from Liano's childhood to lead him on a wild goose chase? What if this was simply a game?

He wasn't sure if he could bare that with his sanity intact. He was aware that to most people, killing was killing. He was also aware that those he killed were because he was put on their trails by the person he assumed was Sophie's killer. Either way, he was going into this warehouse, and he was going to come face to face with the person behind all these nightmares.

The self- preserving part of his mind yelled its denial. He needed to go somewhere safe, wait a few years for the media to get bored, and the case to get cold before he made his final actions. He wasn't planning to make this look like an accident. He should have had some sort of supplies, but he decided against it. No, all he was taking was his cane, a gun, and some ammunition. This wasn't going to be interrogation style. He wouldn't have time for that.

If he was a little more interested in making sure that his tracks were covered, he wouldn't be here in the first place. If he was here simply for information, that would require more planning and preparation. But, no, he had made his choice, and was going to mute out the doubt in his mind.

That said, he was well aware that this mess was going to end up bloody, and that he would only have a short window to work with.

Unfortunately, he had a plan. If he wanted to get to whoever was behind this, he would need to get caught. If this was really a game to someone, then he would have the pleasure of making the final move. However, this was a dangerous play. If it wasn't Julian, or if it wasn't a ploy to get him in their grasps, then this was going to go bad really, really quickly. If he was lucky, then whoever was behind this mess would want to brag a bit. Honestly, he would probably do the same thing if he was in there position. If he had spent so long on a plan, he would want whoever he was against to know exactly what he had done. He would want to look into their eyes as it clicked in their mind exactly how much that they had been played.

He was, as strange as it was, hoping, planning, that the person behind this was similar enough to himself that they would be easy enough to play.

A few minutes later, Liano choked on blood, before turning his head and spitting on the ground. He wanted to scream. He wasn’t usually so stupid! He should have expected this! No, he had expected it, but for some reason, he hadn't actually expected it to hurt as much as it did seeing his friends face on an adult body. His friend, his once brother, had played along for all of a minute when Liano had strolled into the warehouse, cane clicking against the ground.

It was Liano who had broken character first. He hadn't gotten further than muttering his friends name before he was being dragged out of the room and beaten by the hired, he assumed, help.

Julian had simply bent down and picked up Liano's cane, before leaning against the wall and watching, amusement dancing in his eyes.

Almost ten minutes later, Liano was bloody, and closer to being shattered than he had ever been in his life. He hadn't felt this since he had found out that Mara had murdered his child. Even Sophie being killed hadn't felt like this. Then again, that was probably because while he had seen pictures, he never actually identified her body, or went to her funeral. While he knew she was dead, it wasn't as final as this was.

He spit again to get rid of the blood threatening to drown him. He wasn't entirely sure where it was coming from, but he knew that he was bleeding, probably internally, but outwardly, he was sure he looked fine. Bruised, slightly bloody, but fine. He was trying so hard to actually think, to remember the plan that his mind had come up with by his car, but he couldn't get past the fact that his friend was in front of him.

He dug his teeth together as a knife dug into his body. He didn't make a noise as it entered his skin, but couldn't help but grimace as it was pulled out of his shoulder. One of the men pressed roughly on the wound, before rubbing it on Liano's face. Not that he really needed to, as he as ninety percent certain that he was bleeding on his forehead.

He had known better than to trust anyone. He had learned that time and time again, even as a child. Which made his stupidity even worse. It didn’t matter that the person who had done this was once his best friend. It didn’t matter that they had grown up together, or that he always adored the other man as a brother.

But no more, he tried to convince himself. The other had reminded him of the lesson they had both learned as children. Trust no one. Even a friend can, and will, stab you in the back if it helped them with their own goals, he reminded himself. Not that it helped, as the saying had only brought up memories of his friend rolling his eyes when Liano had gotten hurt the first few times, protecting Sophie.

The worst part, he admitted to himself, was that Julian was not only watching the beating, and allowing it, but his once best friend was enjoying watching Liano get taken down a few more notches. Trust no one.

What really pissed him off was that this was exactly what Julian Vasos would have done, even when they were kids. Julian had been the one to teach him how to gather and use blackmail efficiently, after all. Julian had been the one to have Sophie surrounded and beaten, just because he was mildly annoyed with Liano as a teenager. That meant Julian had been the one who had Sophie killed, and him blamed for it. That meant Julian had been the one who killed Sloan and Allen, as well as the one who left Cyril Hillyer with a huge hole in his stomach, slowly bleeding out on the floor, just because Julian had known that Liano would be there soon.

As much as he wanted to deny it, he knew his friend hadn't changed a bit. The only difference between sixteen year old Jul and the twenty four year old Julian was that this one had less problems getting what he wanted.

In this case, what he wanted was exactly what he got. Liano, beaten and bloody at his feet. Why, he didn't know exactly, not yet, but if he knew Julian at all, his friend would happily inform him of the reasons soon enough.

It was funny how being beaten by your ex best friend after being stabbed in several places changed your outlook on things.

"Hey Li." Julian said cheerfully, straightening a bit, stretching his arms over his head, and making the other five men back up a bit. "How's life been? You know, after you abandoned me and the rest of the world to take care of your little princess."

He coughed slightly. "Shut the fuck up. You're giving me a headache. Did you even get through puberty yet?" He shot back. He knew his voice sounded breathy and wet thanks to the blood that kept filling his mouth, but there really wasn’t much he could do about that. Liano shifted slightly. A few ribs were probably broken, and his ankle was snapped. He didn’t have his cane after being jumped by the welcoming committee, thankfully his once friend did, nor did he had his bag, as he had, rather stupidly, left it in his car.

There wasn’t a very big chance of him getting out of this alive. He knew that. How could he not? But, at the same time, there was no way that he was going to let the man in front of him continue his twisted ways.

Long ago, Jul had promised him that if he ever snapped, he would kill him before he could do too much damage. He never imagined being the one on the other side of the promise. How could he? Julian was, well, Julian.

He had aged well, Liano couldn't help but think. The other man had always been similar in build to himself, but Julian's arms bulged with muscle that came from years and years of practice. His honey colored hair was more the color of shining gold with the lights on. The eyes though, the eyes told him exactly how much his once best friend had changed. Brilliant grey- blue eyes had dulled to more of a steel color.

They once were guarded, like his own, and trying to do nothing more than blending in. Now, though, they were unhinged. There was no glint of recognition, no compassion for his childhood best friend. No, there was nothing besides cold satisfaction and excitement over finally having his friend at his mercy.

Liano felt pity as he looked at the man in front of him. Something had broken the strong, understanding, even if he had still been slightly sadistic, boy he had known and twisted him into the puppet of a man that he now was.

Julian clenched his teeth and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, punching him in the nose until he could taste even more blood. Liano didn’t bother trying to defend himself. If anything, he owed the other for the time Liano had punched him.

If anything, that made the other more angry.

Liano tried to distance himself from the situation as he had been able to do for years, but couldn't. He couldn't call the man in front of him Vasos. He had been with the other for most of his life, had known him when he started school, and Jul had supported him through every decision he had made for high school. Sure, he had been pissed when he found out that Liano not only wanted to go to college, but somehow, wanted to go into criminal justice. That had been just a month before Julian had went into foster care.

He hadn't seen the other anywhere after that. Not at school, or in the neighborhood. He had always thought it was strange, but he had never said anything about it. He had just figured that the other was finally done with his bull shit and wanted nothing more to do with him.

"What happened to you?" He asked through the blood. He hadn't thought that he would ever be the one in this position. He hated the other a little for making him have to do this.

"Time, Li, time fucked up all of us." Jul told him, laughing quietly.

Liano shook his head slightly, and sucked in a breath as he was hit again by the idiots that were clearly more muscles than brains. They could hit him all they wanted, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t call the others bullshit. It would have taken more than just time to break his friend. "That’s a lie, fucktard." He muttered, ignoring his friend's helper. "Time didn't do anything other than never stop. That means someone did something, and I'm not going to let you continue to hurt yourself." He hissed back.

Julian knelt beside him, laughing lightly, and moved his bloody hair out of Liano's face. Their eyes met, and Liano felt himself fall. There was nothing left of the friend he had known. The person in front of him may have had Julian's face, his voice, and his mannerisms, but the person was nothing more than a mindless beast that wanted to be put down.

The worst part was that Jul knew. He was fairly certain that the boy that had been his best friend for years was craving death in the same way Liano had for so long.

He swallowed the blood in his mouth, and glanced to the side of the golem that his best friend had turned into. Julian would never move on. He would never get better. He would never heal.

For some reason, the thought caused his chest to tighten painfully, and an invisible ice pick to stab his heart. He had always thought, always hoped, that the other would be stronger than he was.

That was partially why he had distanced himself from his once shadow. Julian was strong. Julian was smart. Julian could protect himself from the world, but Sophie? She couldn't. Julian didn’t need him, he was just as independent as Liano was, and just as clever. Sophie, he had known, wouldn’t be able to survive and adapt if she had lost him.

"Why?" He asked, unsure if he really wanted to know the answer.

He had allowed Sophie to become his weakness, and encouraged his friend to be more capable of living alone at the time.

"Because I could." The other answered, his eyes lit up in excitement of finally being able to let his best friend in on the secret. Liano felt sick to his stomach. "Because she ruined everything, and she was weak. You remember the dog, right? It's just like that."

Liano felt like laughing, or maybe even throwing up on the others shoes. He wasn't really sure which. He remembered the dog alright. When he had been about eight, he and Julian had been roaming the streets, as they usually did, when they had come across a dog that had been run over. It was still alive, but there was no way it was going to survive. Bones were sticking out of fur, and one leg had been mostly detached by the time they saw it.

Liano had killed it.

He walked over to the whimpering dog, pet it until it calmed slightly, then broke its neck. The weak will die, he remembered saying, the injured may need a little help though.

They had laughed about it for an hour, and joked about the death several times. Never when Sophie was around though. She didn’t need to know what made him a monster.

"The injured need a little help." He muttered almost against his will. But that was the problem with this whole situation. Sophie wasn’t weak. She had been, that was impossible to deny, but she had grown up, matured, and gotten stronger.

"She was infected, Li. You couldn't see it because you were too close, but she was sick. You getting blamed for it, well, it was your fault. She wasn’t worth getting close to. I mean, sure, she looked like a doll, but even toys should be retired after a while. You think you knew her? You think that she was this, what was it, innocent light?" Julian scoffed. "Please, you were just too blind to see the truth. She was sick, just like you are, just like I am, and needed to be put down."

His rage grew, and his stomach soured for a whole different reason. "Sophie was nothing like us!" He hissed.

Julian gave him a look of pity. He could read it as clearly in the other's eyes as he could read his own. Julian genuinely pitied him for not seeing whatever was so clear to the others twisted mind. He tried to figure out what exactly the other was seeing, but he didn't see it.

His friend shook his head, and tried not to roll his eyes. "Look, you aren't stupid, Liano, but when it comes to the people close to you? You always look, but never watch. You can see, I guess, but you never really seem to understand what it is that you are watching. You can't… You lose more than just your guard when you let someone in, Li, you lose the ability to see who they truly are." He snorted and shook his head again. "It's almost like you can't see the monsters in us because you're too busy trying to keep us from seeing who you are. Sophia Lucas was a lot of things, but she wasn’t innocent. She wasn’t pure. She wasn’t whatever other things you have deluded yourself into thinking she was."

"What was her infection then?" Liano couldn't help but wonder.

Julian tossed his blonde hair back slightly. "She was a druggie, an addict if you will. She was good at hiding it, damn good at it. I wouldn't have even seen it if I hadn't seen her with my own eyes talking to one of my dealers. Sophia Lucas was a drug addict, an actress, who was using you to make sure no eyes ever got where she didn't want them. Funny enough, after your apartment got broken into, yes I know about that, the first thing she did was call her dealer and warn him that someone was onto him. Pitiful rat that the man was, he called his boss, who called the person who supplied me, who called me to take care of his little problem. Color me surprised when I saw her with a drug dealer."

"You're lying." He stated calmly. Julian had to be lying. There was no way Sophie was addicted to anything. She was overly critical of everyone who did drugs, from drinking to actual drugs, she hated it all. The thought that Sophie was using him to make sure that no one caught a drug dealer was ridiculous.

His friend scoffed and rolled his steely grey eyes. "I knew you wouldn't believe me." Jul told him, reaching in his pocket for something. "I don't make claims I can't back up, Li."

Three pictures were enough to rock his world. Three pictures, and his entire image of Sophie was shattered. The first was a black and white photograph of sweet Sophie handing a man a stack of bills. In the second, she was being passed a baggie. It was the third that really shook him though. The third one had her mid- motion, about to take one of the pills. It was wrong, so wrong, but it was Sophie. The image was clear enough for him to know that much.

"So this? This was to, what? Hurt me? Prove your better than me? Prove that Sophie wasn't an angel? What do you want? For fucks sake, don’t you get it? Do you know what I had to do to get here?" He couldn't help but ask.

"I didn’t make you do anything, Li. I never made you poison the Metzger. I never held a gun to your head and told you that you had to blow up the building or I'd kill you. Sure, I killed your look alike, and the slut's boyfriend, but I never said that you had to break out of jail, or not call the police when you discovered Ken Allen in your room. The only deaths I'm responsible for are those three, and I guess you can blame me for Hillyer's death too. I may have gotten you into this mess, but I had nothing to do with the choices you made once you were involved. That's your mess, and your sins. Not mine."

On one hand, his friend was right. Liano had willingly taken the lives of several people, but at least the people he had killed deserved it.

As if he could read Liano's mind, and for all he knew, Julian could, the other threw his head back and laughed. It took him a few moments to calm enough to ask a single question. One that, should he live would echo in his head every night.

"Do you remember your promise?" Liano whispered, ignoring the pain to meet his once brothers eyes. Julian's eyes widened a bit.

He seemed to be pondering something, before his friend finally looked him in the eye. "You don't mean...?" Julian took a deep breath, a spark of something that Liano didn't recognize in his friends eyes. "Are you asking me to kill you?"

"Yes." Liano replied simply. It was funny how such a simple word could have such a profound meaning to the two of them. By this point, the guards weren't even in Liano's thoughts. He was focused, one thousand percent of his mind, on his friend.

Julian seemed to be speechless, but Liano wasn't fooled. His friend was expecting this. The feeling that he couldn't identify, was pride. Julian thought, for some reason, that his friend was done.

Clearly, he forgot exactly who he was dealing with.

He spat a gob of blood in his once friends face, knowing the results before he had even opened his mouth. "I'm going to die here, Julian Vasos, but its you who needs to be put down. You promised to stop me all those years ago if I killed, and you failed. You failed, and I don't even want to think about all those who died because you couldn't keep your promise."

Julian backhanded him, and his head hit the hard, concrete floor."What gives you the right to decide who deserves to die without giving me the same? "

He was about to respond when everything went to hell.

That's when the shots started. Liano grinned bloody as the guards rushed out of the room, leaving him with his best friend. Jul grinned back. They both knew that only one of them would leave the room. Julian threw himself at Liano, punching him in the eye, and laughing loudly. The punch hit with a small crack that he ignored. Neither of them were in the best of shape, though Julian was slightly better seeing as he wasn’t injured beforehand.

When it came down to it, though, Liano was the better fighter. He had gotten into more than his fair share of conflicts that turned physical in the past, and knew not only how to throw a punch, but how to take one as well.

Julian had gotten soft, he couldn't help but realize as he managed to get the other to the ground. He had gotten too comfortable with life, too sure that he was doing the right thing.

For all he knew, Julian was the hero of his story, but he had made a huge mistake. He had allowed Liano to get behind him.

His hands were placed on his friend's neck, and they both seemed to freeze.

"I'm sorry." Liano whispered.

He could feel Julian swallow as his grip on the honey colored hair, pulling his head back even more. Both of them knew what was about to happen, just as they both knew this was the only possible way it could have ended between them at this point. Liano couldn't let his friend live without dishonoring both Julian and Sophie, just as Julian knew that Liano wouldn't stop himself, for all their sakes. If one of them had to be killed by another's hand, they both knew who they would pick.

"I know." Julian breathed out. Liano tightened his grip on the others throat, and twisted roughly until the sound of cracking bones echoed in his ears, while steel eyes dulled. Julian, the boy he had grown up with, wasn’t all there. If he had been, there was no way Liano would have won.

He didn’t move for the longest of moments, just sat there, sitting on the body of one of the greatest people he had ever known, and bowed his head. Julian wasn't a good man, or really even a bad one, he was simply a man who had taken his life and forced himself into a position of power. Everything that Jul had was because the other had worked extremely hard. No, Jul wasn't a good man. He was a great one. No one would ever know that though.

Julian was sick, that was true, but he had become great. He stared down at his friend, and took a deep breath. Now sightless steel eyes would never look at him again. But neither could they harm anyone else. It was a bittersweet moment. He had gotten his revenge for Sophie, but he still had more questions than answers.

He stood, ignoring the pain, and grabbed a gun from his dead friend. The guards had long since run off, to go and either try to get away, or find out what had caused the sound in the first place.

His vision blurred, and he brought a hand to his face as he pulled the trigger right between the eyes of the blonde, even if he knew it was useless. Julian was dead already, but he had no other choice. He whispered an apology, this one for planting the ideas in the others head, and for not noticing, and dropped the gun, using the wall to stagger in the other direction.

He may not have known this would happen the day he was told about Sophie's death, but he had finished it. Just like he had promised he would. He had gotten revenge for Sophie, Trevor Sloan, and Cyril Hillyer. Just not quick enough. He couldn't say how many others had died because of his friend, but he knew that the number, whatever it may have been, would remain unchanging for the rest of time.

Julian had managed to do what not many other people had the guts or brains to pull off, and yet he had died in a place like this. It wasn’t right, but at least this way, no one else would know the true story of the deaths caused by Julian Vasos. Those in law enforcement would simply think that Liano had captured the other man, and killed him for no reason. This was the only way to protect his friend.

He nodded his head lightly. Liano would quietly accept the deaths that his friend had caused as his own. It was the least he could do for the other who had been given nothing but crap cards his entire life.

If he made it out of here, he might even take his friend's name as well, stealing the legacy of a killer from the man that had so long ago promised to kill him should he ever lose control.

Even if it hadn't worked out the way they had planned, he had also done what his friend had promised to do to him so long ago. He had stopped the monster before it was too late.

No one else would die by Julian's hand. He had done exactly what he needed to do. More than that, he had made sure that his friend wouldn’t suffer more than he already had.

It wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to do it, and he strongly doubted that he would live through the rest of the day, but that didn’t stop him from hobbling out of the room. He didn’t deserve to mourn his friend. He didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the other.

He glanced back, etching the nightmare into his brain, before continuing forward. This may have been a nightmare, but he wasn’t running away.

No, he was willingly walking into his worst nightmare, one that he never would wake up from.

 

The End


End file.
